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Pauline Fan, Beyond Redemption: Fatimah Busu and the Reckoning of Malay Literature

“On this terrible morning, everything is relentless—”

~ Fatimah Busu, “The Lovers of Muharram”

An Ordinary Tale About Women and Other Stories, recently published by Penguin Random House SEA, gathers my translations of ten of Fatimah Busu’s most searing short stories. These narratives, steeped in the rhythms and struggles of rural Malay life, lay bare the quiet resilience and fierce defiance of women caught in the grip of economic hardship, gendered oppression, sexual violence, and the unrelenting gaze of moral scrutiny. Fatimah’s fiction does not flinch—it confronts. Her stories burn with an intensity that renders them both starkly real and hauntingly evocative.

Translating her work into English felt not just necessary but urgent. Fatimah Busu remains one of the most formidable yet overlooked figures in Malay literature—an expert of the short story,her use of the Kelantanese dialect, her fearless dissection of gender and power, and her audacious narrative experiments unsettle the boundaries of the literary canon. At a time when many of her works have faded from print in their original language, this collection seeks to reignite her legacy, bringing her radical storytelling to a new generation of readers in Malaysia and beyond.

A Singular Voice in Modern Malay Literature

Born in 1943 in Kelantan, Fatimah Busu emerged in the 1970s as one of the most important literary figures of her generation in Malaysia. Her short stories won national literary prizes almost every year and it became evident that she was a writer to be reckoned with. Her literary career, now spanning more than six decades, has been marked by a fearless interrogation of social structures, gender roles, and the contradictions of the modern condition. Through her fiction, she carved a space for narratives that foregrounded the complexities of Malay society, particularly from the perspective of rural women and children. Fatimah Busu’s major works include the novels Ombak Bukan Biru (1977) and Salam Maria (2004), as well as seven short story collections including Yang Abadi (1980) and Al-Isra (1985). An accomplished scholar, she authored an important study of comparative literature, Ciri-ciri Satira dalam Novel Melayu dan Africa Moden (Elements of Satire in the Modern Malay and African Novel) in 1992.

While her fiction consistently garnered significant critical acclaim, she gradually became an outsider to the Malay literary establishment. Her novel Salam Maria—about a woman condemned by her community who establishes a spiritual sanctuary for outcast women at the edge of the forest—stirred up controversy, and was even accused of being ‘insulting to Islam’.[1] Rejected for publication by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (the national body for language and literature that had given Fatimah her early prizes), Salam Maria was eventually published independently but suffered from poor editing and limited distribution. Despite being seriously considered for the Sasterawan Negara (National Laureate) award, she was never granted this honor. For Fatimah, however, principles mattered more than literary accolades. In 2004, she rejected the prestigious SEA Write Award for regional writers in protest of the Tak Bai massacre, in which Thai security forces killed scores of Malay-Muslims in southern Thailand. This act of defiance underscored her deep political convictions and her refusal to be co-opted by institutions she viewed as complicit in injustice.

Fatimah Busu’s fiction captures the raw, unembellished realities of Malay rural life, particularly the struggles and resilience of communities in Kelantan who work on rice fields, rubber plantations, or engage in casual work. Refusing to paint a romanticized portrait of rural folk, her stories unfold within the intricate social fabric of the village, where nature, poverty, local politics, and moral scrutiny shape individual and collective destinies. Two stories included in my translated collection, “At the Edge of a River” (Di Tebing Sebuah Sungai) and “Spilled Rice” (Nasinya Tumpah), exemplify this with particular nuance.

In addition to a focus on villages and women, another defining feature of her work is her use of the Kelantanese dialect and its colloquialisms, which lends authenticity and emotional depth to her characters. The rhythm, idioms, and inflections of the dialect not only ground her narratives in a specific cultural landscape but also challenge the dominance of standardised Malay in literary discourse. By integrating Kelantanese dialect into her storytelling, Fatimah affirms the richness of regional linguistic traditions, asserting that the voices of rural Malays—especially women—are worthy of literary expression and critical engagement.

Contextualising Fatimah Busu

Fatimah Busu belongs to a generation of Malay women writers who, from the 1960s through to the 1980s, sought to portray in their fiction forms of women’s subjectivity that moved away from stereotypes such as the ‘fallen woman’ (often a prostitute) or the ‘good suffering wife’ who is a paragon traditional virtues. Writers such as Anis Sabirin, Salmi Manja, Zaharah Nawawi, and Khadijah Hashim explored themes of female agency, education, love, ambition, and social constraints within a rapidly modernizing nation. Their works gave voice to the personal and political struggles of women navigating shifting gender expectations and cultural norms.[2] While these writers brought fresh and diverse perspectives to Malay literature, Fatimah Busu distinguished herself through her raw and powerful depictions of the lives of rural women, often by exposing the hypocrisy of state and religious authorities. Like many of her peers, her work is largely out of print in the Malay language today, making it difficult for newer generations to access her radical and deeply resonant storytelling.

To understand Fatimah Busu’s literary significance, we can situate her work within the broader development of modern Malay literature. The ASAS ‘50 (Angkatan Sasterawan 1950) movement, which emerged  amid the spirit of Independence, with its slogan of “Seni untuk Masyarakat” (Art for Society), emphasized literature as a tool for social progress and national consciousness. Prominent writers such as Keris Mas, Usman Awang, and A. Samad Ismail sought to reflect the struggles of the working class, the realities of new urban life, and the aspirations of an emergent Malayan identity. By the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of writers had begun to explore more experimental forms and personal narratives, shifting the literary focus from grand nationalist themes to the intricacies of individual experiences.

Fatimah Busu’s fiction intersects with both these literary trends but stands apart in its engagement with gender and power. Unlike her male contemporaries, who often framed women’s struggles within the context of male heroism or redemption, Fatimah Busu centered women’s experiences as the primary narrative force. While male writers depicted political and socio-economic themes from a male-centric lens, Fatimah Busu speaks from the experience of women in all spheres of life. A. Samad Said’s Salina (1958)—often hailed as the supreme representative of the modern Malay novel—portrayed a fallen woman’s tragic fate within a broader social critique. By contrast, Fatimah Busu’s female protagonists challenge their circumstances with an agency that refuses victimhood. Shahnon Ahmad’s Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan (1966), another classic modern Malay novel, focused on the hardships of a peasant family, yet did not probe the gendered dimensions of rural life with the nuance and urgency found in Fatimah Busu’s work.

Fatimah Busu’s literary defiance lies in her refusal to allow women to be mere symbols of suffering or virtue. Women in Fatimah’s fiction do not seek to be redeemed or rescued; they are fully realized individuals, negotiating power, sexuality, and survival on their own terms, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Non-Western Feminist Disruption

Fatimah Busu’s feminism is not rooted in Western liberal frameworks but emerges organically from the cultural and historical realities of Malay society. Her portrayal of women draws from traditional gender roles in Kelantan, where women have historically wielded significant economic and social power. Kelantanese mythology is populated with powerful female figures such as Che Siti Wan Kembang and Puteri Sa’adong, rulers who defied male authority and still command reverence in the popular imagination of Kelantan, even under present-day Islamic party rule. In Fatimah Busu’s fiction, women are never passive subjects; they are active agents in their own narrativization, in their resisting and navigating of oppressive patriarchal structures.

A crucial aspect of Fatimah Busu’s writing is her depiction of the power and vulnerability of ordinary women in rural Kelantan and elsewhere. She portrays women who bear the brunt of economic instability, domestic burdens, and moralistic judgement yet refuse to succumb entirely to despair. Her short stories and novels highlight the quiet resilience of women who must navigate a society that looks at them askance—divorced women and single mothers struggling to provide for their children, young women whose dreams and desires are constrained by rigid social mores. In so doing, she dismantles the stereotype of rural Malay women as docile and powerless. Moreover, Fatimah turns her unflinching gaze and pen on taboo topics such as incest, rape, and baby-dumping, questioning the integrity of legal institutions that punish women for these social maladies.

Fatimah’s feminist perspective is deeply influenced by Islamic thought, particularly the spiritual legacy of female sainthood. Her novel Salam Maria exemplifies this synthesis, drawing upon the figure of Rabi‘ah al-Adawiyyah, the 8th-century Sufi saint renowned for her teachings on divine love and spiritual devotion. Through this engagement, she aligns female agency with religious transcendence, countering the notion that feminism and Islam exist in opposition. Her feminism does not seek redemption: it is a force of reclamation—honoring the deep, historical significance of women in Islamic and Malay traditions while challenging patriarchal distortions of religious authority.

This disruptive feminist aspect of her work unsettles the literary establishment and certain academic circles. It defies simplistic classifications and challenges prevailing frameworks of interpretation. Fatimah Busu cannot be dismissed as a Western feminist imposing foreign ideals onto Malay society, nor can she be confined within the conservative framework of so-called “Islamic literature.” Her feminism is deeply embedded in the lived realities of Malay women, making it both radical and undeniable. The discomfort her literary work provokes is a testament to its power—she forces a deep reckoning with the contradictions and injustices that impact, and at times destroy, women’s lives in contemporary Malaysia.

Dreams and dajjal

Beyond her feminist themes, Fatimah Busu’s work is distinguished by its bold narrative experimentation. She refuses to be confined by conventional storytelling techniques, blending realism with elements of magic realism, absurdism, and satire. Her stories frequently incorporate dreams, stream-of-consciousness passages, creating a topography of imagination that is at once deeply rooted in Malay tradition and strikingly avant-garde. Her stories defy linear progression, frequently shifting perspectives and temporalities to mirror the chaotic, fragmented realities of her characters’ lives. The titular story, “An Ordinary Tale About Women” (Cerita Biasa Tentang Perempuan) is made up of a series of fragments, each one detailing sexual and social violence towards women and girls and closing with a deadpan “End of story.” There is deliberately little character development here and no neat resolutions, underscoring a sense of reportage while imbuing the story with the cyclical repetitions we usually associate with archetypal myths.

Fatimah Busu’s mastery of reimagining Malay epics and folklore is particularly notable.[3] Two stories included in the present collection are retellings of the legends of Puteri Gunung Ledang from Sulalatus Salatin (The Malay Annals) and the story of Raja Malik ul-Mansur from the Hikayat Raja-raja Pasai (Chronicle of the Kings of Pasai). Both legends are significant in classical Malay literature, both embodying themes of power, desire, and the limits of human ambition. In “The Dowry of Desire” (Mahar Asmara), Fatimah subverts the legendary tale of Puteri Gunung Ledang, transforming the mythical princess into a capricious adolescent who revels in the downfall of a vainglorious and power-hungry sultan. By contrast, “Narration of the Ninth Tale” (Alkisah Cetera yang Kesembilan), the exiled king Raja Malik ul-Mansur embodies themes of loyalty, regret, and mortality. In her introspective retelling, Fatimah explores the psychological depth of the tragic hero and suggests that possibilities of redemption lie in self-awareness and the renunciation of worldly power.

Fatimah Busu’s experimentation extends to speculative fiction and social satire. Written in epistolary form, “A Letter to Mother in Kampong Pasir Pekan” (Surat untuk Emak di Kampung Pasir Pekan) is a surreal tale in which imp-like dajjal creatures run riot in a village. In the Islamic eschatological tradition, the dajjal is the deceiver and false messiah who will emerge before the end of time, spreading deceit and chaos, leading people astray with illusions of power and sophistry. In Fatimah’s story, the grotesque and gleeful dajjalembody the chaos of moral decay, signaling the erosion of ethical and spiritual order. By the end of the story, it becomes clear that these dajjal are metaphors for political authorities deceiving the local community with their false promises.

Fatimah Busu’s fiction is often punctuated by dreamscapes and apocalyptic visions, where reality fractures, and the subconscious unfurls in dissonant, prophetic waves. The line between waking and dreaming is blurred, creating a liminal space where personal guilt and collective reckoning collide. This unconventional structure heightens the emotional and thematic impact of her work, immersing readers in a world where past and present, reality and nightmare, mundane and otherworldly, are in constant interplay. “Watching the Rain”(Melihat Hujan) and “Watching the Full Moon” (Melihat Bulan Purnama) are a complementary pair of stories (one sacred, one profane) in which a mother and son embark on visionary journeys that critique the spiritual and ethical decline of society.

“Watching the Full Moon” is where Fatimah Busu’s apocalyptic vision is most vividly realized. In this story, the moon is not merely an object of quiet contemplation but a harbinger of doom, swelling ominously in the night sky as the world below teeters on the edge of collapse. Time bends and distorts, and the narrator is drawn into a surreal, nightmarish landscape where reality dissolves into a cascade of shifting images—swarms of people copulating like beasts, the flesh of dead babies, the darkened walls of religious institutions. The sense of impending catastrophe is both cosmic and deeply personal, as if the world itself is unraveling under the weight of its own transgressions. These moments of rupture—both mystical and terrifying—underscore Fatimah’s ability to conjure a world where Hari Kiamat (The Day of Judgement) is not a distant cataclysm on the horizon, but something already written in the sky.

Unquiet Nature

 In Fatimah’s stories, the natural world is not a silent backdrop but a witness, a conspirator, and at times, a judge. In “The Lovers of Muharram”, trees whisper secrets in the wind, narrating the rendezvous of clandestine lovers and the terrible consequences that unfold. In “The Dowry of Desire”, flowers recite pantun verses and bamboo reeds sigh in longing. Birds are not symbols of freedom; they bear witness and critique society, their cries piercing through the air like unanswered questions. In “An Ordinary Tale About Women”, a family of cecawi birds (drongos)—known for their alarm calls—ridicule the absurd injustice of a legal system biased against women. Even the smallest creatures are given a voice—in “Narration of the Ninth Tale”, Raja Malik ul-Mansur confides his sorrows to the ‘Prophet of Worms’, who compels him to reflect on his life and the folly of humankind. The natural world in Fatimah’s stories does not passively exist; nature sees,  listens, speaks, and it remembers.

The stories collected in the anthology are saturated with the elemental weight of water—its presence, its absence, its power to sustain or destroy.  Imagery of fluid substances—river, blood, rain, poison, tears, flood—runs through her stories with an elemental force, unsettling daily life and unraveling hidden truths. In “At the Edge of a River”, the river is both a sanctuary and a trap, its steady flow mirroring the illusion of stability as a family settles on its banks, only to find themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control. Blood seeps through “An Ordinary Tale About Women” not just as a mark of violence but as a lineage of suffering and sacrifice—women bound to their fates by blood spilled in childbirth and infanticide. In the “Dowry of Desire”, the  tables are turned: the celestial princess thirsts for the blood of the Sultan and his son. Poison courses through “Spilled Rice”, an unseen corruption that taints sustenance and innocence, turning the most basic act of nourishment into an act of quiet destruction. Tears in “Narration of the Ninth Tale” and “The Lovers of Muharram” do not merely signal sorrow; they are torrents of suppressed longing, shame, and loss—overflowing when words fail, dissolving what cannot be endured. As tears fall, they cleanse and strip away illusions, unearthing deeper, darker truths.

Translating Fatimah

Fatimah Busu’s fiction stands at the crossroads of bold narrative experimentation, disruptive feminist reckoning, and the echoes of Malay oral tradition. Her prose does not merely tell stories—it unsettles, provokes, and asserts experiences too often silenced.

To translate Fatimah Busu is to navigate a terrain dense with linguistic textures and cultural resonances, to bear across the weight of her truths without eroding their fire. In carrying her stories into English, I have sought not only to broaden the reach of Malay literature but to evoke its pulse, its cadences, its unspoken realities. Her words do not merely traverse linguistic thresholds; they assert their presence in the larger constellation of world literature, demanding to be heard in all their rawness and power. Translation, in this sense, is an act of witness—one that preserves the jagged beauty of Fatimah’s vision while allowing it to echo across new landscapes of understanding.

Fatimah Busu writes as if to set fire to complacency, as if each story were an incantation against erasure and forgetting. In rendering her work into another tongue, I have sought to carry forward the force of her voice—its urgency, its reckoning, its fierce and unyielding spirit—so that her words remain etched, like indelible ink, upon the canvas of time.

 

 

Pauline Fan is a writer, literary translator, and cultural researcher from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her literary translations include An Ordinary Tale about Women and Other Stories by renowned Malay writer Fatimah Busu (Penguin Random House SEA, 2024) and Tell Me, Kenyalang by Sarawak poet Kulleh Grasi (Circumference Books, 2019). Pauline is creative director of cultural organisation PUSAKA and currently serves as adjunct professor at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication at Universiti Putra Malaysia.

 

 

NOTES

[1] Koon, W.S.. (2011). Gender, Islam and the “Malay Nation” in Fatimah Busu’s Salam Maria. 124-142, in Mohamad, M., & Aljunied, S.M.K. Melayu. The Politics, Poetics, and Paradoxes of Malayness. (New ed.). Singapore: NUS Press.  

[2] Alicia Izharuddin (2018). The New Malay Woman: The Rise of the Modern Female Subject and Transnational Encounters in Postcolonial Malay Literature. In: Chin, G., Mohd Daud, K. (eds) The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back. Asia in Transition, vol 6. Springer, Singapore.

[3] For a discussion on Fatimah Busu’s feminist retelling of the legend of Hang Tuah, see Khoo, Gaik Chen, Malay Myth and Changing Attitudes towards Nationalism: The Hang Tuah/ Hang Jebat Debate, Reclaiming Adat: Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature (2006), NUS Press, Singapore.

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Rebecca Karl, On Mao in the Philippines: Notes on a trip (January 2025)

On a recent trip to the Philippines, facilitated by old friends yet shadowed by crises stretching from Gaza to the US to Sudan and everywhere in between and beyond, I gave some talks at various venues. I had no idea what to expect from my audiences so I designed interventions that would perhaps appeal to wider publics, while remaining embedded in my many years of research and thinking about China, history, politics, and the world.

My first talk, facetiously entitled “Why Mao? Why now?,” was fashioned out of a short piece I wrote some years ago about pedagogy; I was scheduled to deliver it in the North at the Alfredo Tadiar Library. Established a few years ago by my friend Neferti in her father’s home town and in remembrance of his giant judicial legacy, the library is a bootstraps affair: run by a small paid staff and a host of volunteers on a miniscule budget, it has become a space of gathering, reading, conversation, and cultural-intellectual exchange in an area apparently not known for widely fostering such activity.

The library is housed in Neferti’s childhood home and its modest physical space is densely packed with meaning. Down a small side street off the bustling main plaza, you turn into a courtyard whose wall mural was painted in vibrant colors by a Houston-based Filipino-American artist known as Kill Joy  working with northern Luzon artists; it depicts everyday folks engaging in everyday labor in joyful, purposeful community. Stepping just inside the building, one finds a small shop, with locally-sourced crafts and a small selection of culturally and politically important books from around the world for sale at favorable prices. One can stop and linger here, in the cool of a lightly air-conditioned space to acclimate from the humid heat outdoors. There was a temporary coffee concession selling deliciously fragrant brews run by a husband-wife team of bean roasters who are passionate about their craft and their community; this concession will soon be replaced, perhaps by a local baker of northern-inspired sweets. Farther in, there is the main room of the library: a few tables now occupied by young people working on a collaborative project are interspersed among several shelving stacks of books, most volumes donated by their authors (several of mine are there) brought suitcase by suitcase from abroad by Neferti and friends. (This reminds me of the Kidlat Tahimik theory of filmmaking for the third world: a “cups of gas” process rather than a “tanks of gas” type of production). All the volumes are catalogued by those volunteers who are simultaneously learning library practices as they run the place. Today, in preparation for my talk, the space is full of folding chairs.

In the very back, there is one more distinct area: a gallery, which, at the time of my visit, was exhibiting a photography project of and by local fishermen, whose everyday labors and environments came to life in the candid portraits and composed shots of boats, sand, shore, nets, fish, light, sky, and work.  This project will soon travel into the fishermen’s own communities for exhibition and discussion.

The space fills up with friends of the library, kith and kin of Neferti, and a number of activists and academics from a wide geographical area. Eventually around 50 people are crammed into the room. My talk is informal and I meander through Mao as a revolutionary, a theorist, a Marxist in the violent imperialist twentieth-century world. I think aloud about why he was effective in his time and why something of his methods and thinking might be relevant still in today’s world of critical politics and social movements, even while contemporary China has long since dispensed with its Maoist past and most of his theory. We dwell on “speaking bitterness” campaigns – or, how early 1950s narratives of suffering created communities of social transformation before they hardened into performatively scripted rote forms – and on the problems of revolutionary necessity, Party discipline, and the scourge of bureaucracy as the death of revolution.

The Q&A is when I learn from the audience about why Mao and why now, for them, in the Philippines: what it has meant to read and act and think with Mao’s theory and practice over long years of revolutionary struggle against multiple authoritarian and imperialist regimes. “On Protracted War” emerges as a key text. A young woman stands up to declaim, in a tumbled self-conscious hybrid of English and Filipino (maybe Ilocano?), about how activists have mobilized Mao in their pursuit of political and cultural revolution; how Mao is not dead theory to them, but live praxis. She is passionate, articulate, and forceful. She is teaching all of us about why Mao still signifies now. I’m grateful for her instruction and learn as much as I can from what I understand her to be saying.

After the talk, I sign the books I had brought in my suitcase, meet a slew of young people intent on learning and practicing and thinking about struggle and revolutionary cultural-political forms, and I’m humbled by their earnest belief – even today – that a different world is possible.  If they were in charge, perhaps it would be so.

Some days later, I am in Manila at The University of the Philippines Center for International Studies (UPCIS) for two talks organized by Ramon Guillermo and Sarah Raymundo. First up is a morning panel on Palestine, convened with Neferti & Jon, our talks interspersed with video clips of Fidel, Hugo, and other Latin Americans repeatedly and in different eras berating world leaders at the United Nations and elsewhere for their supine acceptance of the decades-long sacrifice of Palestinians on the altar of fealty to Israel. In the Manila audience are Palestinians, Filipino activists, the Venezuelan ambassador, all told around 90 concerned people. There is none of the security apparatus that surrounds such events on US campuses these days, although the threat of state violence in the Philippines is never far away. None of us speaking is a specialist on Palestine, yet all three of us long have been active in our universities and other academic settings on behalf of Palestinian liberation and more recently anti-genocide protest.

Jon begins with some thoughts on Palestine and value forms (how many Palestinians are worth how many Israelis for example). He draws on his recently published exchange with Ali Musleh, in which the two dialogue about the total permeation of Israeli genocide against the Palestinians into the media ecology of thought, feeling, and affect the world over. In the intensification of what Jon calls the “semiowar” over meaning and information, none of us can be mere spectators. We all are complicit. How to navigate our complicity, to recognize and act on the fact that genocide (over there) implicates all of us (over here) becomes the challenge and the gauntlet. Genocide is financialized – no matter how it ends up, someone stands to make billions – and we are all thus enveloped into the computational warfare, since each of us lives in the mediated world and our data provides financial opportunities for the mega tech oligarchs. The complexity of his thinking is hard to convey, but it is stunning and he leaves us with a sense of foreboding: if we don’t grasp the contours of the semiowar and its computational weaponry, we will become mere fodder in its accelerated process.

Neferti does not lighten the mood. Drawing on her recent work on remaindered lives, she sketches in elemental ways how some bodies, some lives, are rendered unvaluable, unvalued, devalued in the course of contemporary warfare, whether economic or military or cultural. That Palestine is the site where this has become so incontrovertibly visible is both a function of the exceptional status that Palestinian lives have always had – exceptional insofar as they have never registered quite as human as Israeli lives – and of the normalization of this exception in the mechanisms of global capitalist accumulation and valuation. In a conversational style that is saturated with rage and erudition, Neferti also traces out how the devalued lives long embodied in Filipino labor have been harnessed to the devaluation of Palestinians in Israel, as Palestinian labor has been suffocated, bombed and destroyed while Filipino (and other Southeast Asian) labor has been imported to take their place. The Philippines is not an “elsewhere;” it is right in the middle of the genocidal process.

They are a tough act to follow.

I speak pointedly and briefly to the university activisms in the US long before and since October 2023, to the encampments and their violent suppression, to the “Palestine Exception” to academic freedom in the United States, and to the huge uphill challenges that face us now in the second coming of our fascist front. I speak as an engaged academic, an anti-Zionist Jew, and an activist on my campus at New York University– all those roles so intertwined that they cannot be disentangled. My words resonate with Jon’s and Neferti’s: now is the time for solidarity and unity against genocide and repression; anything less than that is complicity.

The talks are received enthusiastically. There is a brief intense group of questions focusing on what we can do now. We have no definitive answers. Several of the Palestinians approach me, and one is so overcome with emotion because, as he informs me, I am the first Jew he has ever met who has publicly identified with the Palestinian struggle. I point to Jon as another and mention that so many pro-Palestinian allies in the States and Europe are in fact anti-Zionist Jews. We take a picture and then we eat the lunch provided by the organizers. We talk of our different life trajectories and our common goals. He introduces me to his mother, who was in attendance and also overcome with emotion. We laugh and we cry together. We affirm our common humanity. It is so far from enough, yet such simple steps remain impossible in many venues, including at my NYU campus in New York where hostility and vindictive institutional and intellectual retribution are what is on offer for those of us who engage in anti-genocide speech and activism.

My afternoon talk at the University is devoted to China. With an audience of 60-70 people, I speak on history, narrative, and revolutionary possibility in China’s 20th century. This is adapted from a presentation I had prepared on my China’s Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History (Verso 2020). I begin with the early twentieth-century feminist He-Yin Zhen and her re-narration of Chinese history through the lens of perdurable patriarchy; I continue through the 20th century, from literary and historical narration to revolutionary activism and back again. Along the way I linger on Ding Ling and her “Thoughts on March 8th,” the piece that critically evaluated the possibility of female revolutionary subjectivity and that, in turn, was criticized by the Party for being too factionalist. I say something like, “Ding Ling was criticized and then sanctioned; she was sent down to live among and be re-educated by peasants.” I move on, through the revolutionary years to the denouement, which soon becomes the reversal and the repudiation of struggle in the name of class harmony, patriarchy, privatization, vast accumulations of individual wealth, national modernization, and global extraction.

The questions posed are respectful and curious: what accounts for “China’s rise,” how does China’s contemporary situation impact the Philippines today, why is the revolution’s history so completely erased in favor of nationalist developmentalism… And then one of the conveners of the event asks a question from her perspective as a long-time member of the opposition in the Philippines, an activist almost since the cradle. She asks: in my characterization of Ding Ling, I indicate that she was “sanctioned” by being sent down to the countryside. This, my friend says, is a peculiar way to think the question. When she was coming up in activism, it was a quest and a privilege to be “sent down;” one eagerly awaited one’s turn to be educated by peasants and the masses. Being sent down was a culminating prize of political education. Why, then, do I use the word “sanction?”

The question is provocative. It indicates precisely the fault-line between being a mere academic and being an activist. That faulty line of mine suddenly opens a gulf between my sanctimonious language of revolutionary discipline and her passionate revolutionary experience. It makes me rethink my articulations of the relation between intellectuals and education by the masses in the midst of revolutionary activism. It turns out that for me, this time in the Philippines has become a vital space where I can be challenged to learn again – is it too late? – how to do politics in the real time of struggle, how to move from the safe space of texts to the actual place of concrete action. Filipino Maoists have taught me, at this time in our attempts to advocate for the security of life and justice for Palestinians and others, why Mao and why now.

Rebecca E. Karl is professor of History at New York University

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Lilian Kong and Shiqi Lin, “Hello My Chinese Spy, Take My Data”: Welcome to the Playground of the Digital Cold War

On January 12, 2025, just days before the short video platform TikTok was pressured to shut down in the U.S., a sensational “migration” began. Millions of American internet users flocked to the Chinese-language social media app RedNote (Xiaohongshu 小红书) in protest against their own government and existing American tech hegemons such as X and Meta.[1]  Half-jokingly, they called themselves “TikTok refugees.” As TikTok was criticized by the U.S. administration for allowing the Chinese government to spy on Americans and steal data, a number of TikTok refugees sardonically turned this into a meme. They waved hi to their new friends on RedNote: “Hello my Chinese spy! Take my data, take my data!”

With the backdrop of China-U.S. rifts and a looming new Cold War, what ensued from this mass digital migration was an unexpected outburst of joy, laughter, and awe. Direct dialogue broke out between American and Chinese digital media users and attracted users from across the world to join their carnival on RedNote. The influx of TikTok refugees dramatically disrupted the algorithms of RedNote and threw all users into a chaotic intercultural, bilingual environment:[2]  English content mushroomed across Chinese-language users’ screens and exposed them to scenes as random as fishing in the Dakotas and farming in Missouri, while non-Chinese users often encountered content of Chinese food and started a viral trend of cooking Chinese steamed eggs following an algorithm-guided recipe. Up until January 19, there was no feature of auto-translation embedded in the app, meaning that Chinese- and English-language speakers often had to take on the manual labor of Google Translating every comment in order to communicate with each other. Whether they speak Chinese or English, the majority of these users had never visited each other’s countries. This unlikely moment of exchange sent waves of shock to them as they came to learn about each other’s life without intermediaries such as politicians or media spokespersons. Oftentimes amassing thousands of replies over one post, they responded to each other with “cat taxes,”memes, flirty jokes, and love notes. They started to compare each other’s work hours, salaries, rents, and insurance, until they realized that they were the same ordinary people carrying the heavy burden of life in different ends of the world. 

Fig. 1: A popular meme on RedNote in response to the arrival of TikTok Refugees.

Across hours of time difference, RedNote was transformed into a playground of memes, flirtations, and deep hangouts, against the apocalyptic ambience of the political crises of our time. People were addicted to this intercultural hodgepodge, so much so that many of them stayed up till 3 or 4am in order to chat with each other and follow each other’s daily life globally. Just as one user from the U.S. posted, “Wake up, my Chinese friends, it’s lonely here while you sleep.” A user from Shanghai responded, “I woke up, my friend. I’ve been staying up late for three consecutive days using this app, hahaha.” Another user from Sichuan replied, “Good morning my friend, I have already got up and am preparing to have breakfast. If possible, I would share my breakfast with you.” It is no wonder how such an interface/interphase of communicative upheaval and algorithmic mess has prompted an American user to ask, with over 9700 likes and 2100 replies: “Is it just me, or does it feel like we’re dating China right now?”

As bilingual media studies scholars, long-time users of RedNote, and members of the Chinese diaspora based in the U.S., we think and write together in this ephemeral moment when the ecologies of both TikTok and RedNote are transforming by the day. We argue that the intercultural encounters on RedNote may be fleeting, but they are not a fad. Those playful and even erotic exchanges forge a conceptual switchpoint for us to unpack the deeply structural confluence of technology, geopolitics, and trans-border agency in our contemporary global social history. Such a lively mode of play also guides our writing as a method of thinking along with social media. If the TikTok ban and U.S.-China rivalry signify the surge of a so-called “digital Cold War,” what we archive in this piece are some alternative, transgressive moments beyond the rigid lines of macro geopolitics. As these horizons of a “global village” re-enter our realm of imagination, this essay critically reflects on the techno-political architectures of digital platforms and the structures of feeling of our time. Most importantly, we invite you to come think and frolic with us within this memefied playground.

Come on in.

From Architectures of Control to Architectures of Communication

We learn from cultural theorist Eyal Weizman’s work (2007) that state power builds architectures of control by exerting its dominance over spatial infrastructures, such as walls, roads, tunnels, water access, and the airspace. The digital world we are inhabiting today is likewise not a free space but an extension of architectural power. The geo-blocking system of the Chinese internet, i.e. the (in)famous Great Firewall of China, provides a historical and vivid illustration of how the architectures of control work in the digital realm (we trust that you don’t need more examples from us to add to the clichés here). We also want to make clear that such a question of infrastructural control and power imbalance is not simply a matter of region or regime, but rooted in the history and present of global digital media. As scholars of Black feminist media studies such as Simone Browne (2015), Ruha Benjamin (2019) and Safiya Umoja Noble (2018) remind us, mechanisms of surveillance, discrimination, and filtering have been encoded in the everyday design of digital technology even in web interfaces that appear open and democratic. Configurations as inconspicuous as regulating one’s methods of creating a social media account or shifting the rule of algorithmic recommendations may not only alter one’s internet experience, but also dictate what kind of data gets produced and how digital environments get segregated by identity, by language, by platform. If each social media platform has developed its own user ecology and digital vernaculars,[3]  here we probe into the architectural setups of RedNote to unravel the ironic twists and turns associated with the outburst of intercultural carnival in this app. We demonstrate how, at this moment, techno-political architectures designed to segregate and control people are paradoxically retooled into architectures of communication.

As the common explanation goes, TikTok refugees chose RedNote because they specifically wanted to pick a Chinese app to mock current U.S. policy decisions, and RedNote was the only one that allowed for registration without Chinese IDs or phone numbers. As a mix of TikTok, Instagram, Yelp, Pinterest, and Amazon, RedNote is known as a lifestyle app for food, travel, beauty, and fashion. It thus felt like a politically “safe” option for Americans.

The backstory, though, is much juicier. The Chinese name of RedNote, which literally means “Little Red Book,” insinuates Quotations from Chairman Mao (1964) in the age of Cultural Revolution and global Maoism. In reality, this app couldn’t be more different from the Maoist quotation book. Known for its consumerist, peer-sharing functions, the app is subject to strong censorship of political content but fairly lax with most other topics. Similar to TikTok, this is an app guided by big data and algorithms: the more you click onto certain posts, the more the app reads your desire and feeds you the same category of posts.

Moreover, in contrast to Web 2.0 social media such as Facebook and WeChat that focus on your acquaintances, RedNote, revealing the viral logic of AI-based social media platforms, puts you in contact with strangers: when you enter this app, the default page is structured less around people you follow than around algorithm-guided feeds tailored to your interests. Because of this emphasis on randomized algorithmic encounters, the app cultivates a sense of decentered community and pseudo-anonymity. Users trust that algorithms will connect them with strangers with similar interests, while they are less likely to encounter their real-world connections in this app than elsewhere. This architectural focus on decentered anonymity has made RedNote remote from contemporary political events up until the dramatic influx of TikTok refugees, but it is precisely this non-politicized culture of the platform that allowed for alternative, low-stake dialogue when TikTok users arrived from a hyper-polarized and hyper-anxious climate at the dawn of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Fig. 2: “Long live Chairman Mao! Long, long live!” 1970 poster of people holding copies of the Little Red Book and celebrating Chairman Mao. Photo by The Mao Era in Objects.

Beyond its seemingly nonpolitical nature, RedNote is in fact transgressive in its own terms: among Chinese digital media users, it has an underground reputation for being one of the most queer and erotic social media platforms in the Chinese-speaking world. This introduces its moniker among some of its users: Little Yellow Book (小黄书). As “yellow” means “pornographic” in Chinese, Little Yellow Book refers to the extent to which the algorithm of RedNote may respond to users’ inner desires and take them to highly sexualized content in all types of sexualities. Let us recall: randomized algorithms as a measure of control have created a decentralized and depoliticized environment of anonymity, but this structure of anonymity is exactly what gives space to the incubation of sexualized desires on the app. Anonymity has encouraged a number of people to use RedNote like a tree hole, into which they share their intimate life experiences and seek resonance with strangers on a range of topics such as dating, cheating, and the exploration of sexuality. Meanwhile, since lexicons such as “LGBTQ+” are censored in RedNote, one has to know the specific codes, memes, and vernaculars specific to this app in order to enter its world of homoerotic communities. It is a form of “digital masquerade,” but also an art of infrapolitics of dancing between the lines. Beneath the Maoist revolutionary cover of the consumerist app Little Red Book, who knew that there would be a whole differently-colored world?

Perhaps, in the light of these algorithmic architectures of tree holes, the steamy intercultural affairs on RedNote this month are not coincidental at all. The ambient but elusive homo/erotic energy of this app mirrors perfectly the multiple threads of desires, affects, and social imaginations at this uncertain moment of U.S.-China relations.

There is one more point to make about the irony played out around the architectural setup of RedNote: like any other Chinese social media app, RedNote has been required by the Cyberspace Administration of China to display users’ locations based on their internet protocol (IP) addresses since April 2022. Amidst zero-COVID lockdowns and the Russia-Ukraine War, the design of this policy was clearly about information control. For IP addresses within China, the users’ provinces will be shown when they post something, while for IP addresses outside China, the users’ countries will be shown. On other Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo, where discussions of current politics were more visible, such an architecture of control often led to harsh measures of control and censorship over politically sensitive content. However, since long-time RedNote users have been accustomed to its non-politicized culture, the same architecture of geo-tracking has paradoxically raised people’s awareness of cultural difference and facilitated transregional conversations before the arrival of TikTok refugees.

For example, after IP addresses were mandatorily revealed, people from Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other parts of Southeast Asia as well as overseas Chinese diasporas and international students in Europe, North America, and Oceania emerged as sizable populations on RedNote. From time to time, conversations broke out between Taiwanese and PRC users to ask about each other’s lives and demystify stereotypes across the Strait. By 2024, precisely because the app can geo-track and generate strong algorithms, a trend has taken off among Chinese-speaking businesses in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia to open accounts on RedNote and attract post-COVID tourists. To some extent, by the time of the TikTok ban, RedNote had already grown into a dynamic platform for border-crossing conversations in the global Chinese world. What’s new in regards to the arrival of TikTok refugees, then, is the introduction of a multilingual environment into the app and the foregrounding of translation as both a physical process of communication and a conceptual question of how ready we are to imagine our cohabitation with distant Others in this age of growing political divides.

Letters to Li Hua

As intercultural chats took off on RedNote, one person’s name came up time and again. English-speakers kept getting emotional replies from their new Chinese besties: “Li Hua finally got a letter back!” 

Who on earth is Li Hua?

The story circulated: Li Hua 李华 is a fictional character who haunted a generation of Chinese schoolkids in the last essay prompt of their English exams, from primary school all the way to high school. Every kid was asked to write short letters to an imaginary English-speaking penpal on behalf of “Li Hua.” Li Hua would be busy with a variety of tasks such as inviting the penpal to visit China, introducing amazing Chinese culture, and arranging plans to celebrate Lunar New Year together. First appearing in the Chinese exam system back in 1995, Li Hua symbolizes not only so many grownups’ childhood nightmares of getting tested on a foreign language, but also their nostalgic memories of 1990s and early 2000s China associated with a lax Internet environment, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, and an infinite curiosity about the world. In their exams, all kids ended their letters with “I look forward to hearing from you,” even though in reality they never heard back from Li Hua’s foreign penpal.

The influx of TikTok refugees into RedNote brought the buried memories of Li Hua back to life. The visceral interactions across language barriers and geo-technological divides not only gave Chinese users an uncanny sense that they were reconnected with their lost penpals, but also prompted global users to learn about the story of Li Hua for the first time. Sometimes shocked, sometimes tearful, English-speakers wrote back letters of thanks to Li Hua on RedNote, one after another. The majority of these letter writers were TikTok refugees from America. For them, the story of a distant character who tried to communicate with them for years hit hard in a moment when they perceived from the threat of the TikTok ban so much antagonism in their home country and displacement of their own digital habitats. As for Chinese users, since they had never expected to hear back from their imagined penpals, they responded to these boomerang letters equally with shock, tears, and gratitude. In the context of an increasingly restricted media environment and the looming new Cold War, they were grateful that these letter writers reached out to them from the other side. To them, this moment of “unwalling” was even analogous to breaking through the Berlin Wall. As one Chinese user posts, “The Berlin Wall cracked, and the letters from Li Hua were finally answered.”

Fig. 3: A widely circulated screenshot on RedNote in the height of the utopic Li Hua moment from January 16 to January 19, 2025.

The significance of such an emotional moment lies in the way in which it circles multiple layers of media and social history back to the present. Like the delayed letter responses to Li Hua, history is a boomerang that constantly re-cites and recycles elements of the past to strike back and interconnect with the affective present. If Francis Fukuyama’s linear vision that history ended in 1989 with the decline of the Socialist bloc can’t be more problematic, what we are learning from the letters to Li Hua is that history, with its fissures and apparitions, keeps coming back to us in new forms and situations. For example, on RedNote, what came along with the Li Hua phenomenon is a revived, positive feeling of creating a “global village,” a sentiment that used to be popular in China with the spread of the Internet at the turn of the millennium. However, the very idea of the “global village,” originating from Marshall McLuhan’s theorization (1964) in Cold War Canada, carries traces of the deep entanglements between paranoia and utopic yearnings in the geopolitically-charged history of the Internet. As we transition into our current world of panoptical algorithms and segregated platforms, visions of the global village strike back as counter-imaginations against the “new Cold War.” From McLuhan’s imaginary of an interconnected world altered by media communications to the millennial dream of the Internet, from the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall to contemporary crossings of the Great Firewall, we see histories syncopate, rhyme, boomerang, and produce utopian resonances across ideological divides.

Ugly Feelings in the Global Village

RedNote’s transformation into a utopian “global village” can be seen as a moment of what Arjun Appadurai (1996) might call “disjuncture.” Media, ideologies, and technological infrastructures shift in relation to each other like tectonic plates, rumbling open cross-platform digital flows that in turn transform the feel of algorithmic architectures. These transregional digital flows appear to have momentarily subdued, sometimes outright cancelled, instantiations of hatred and fear that have so often been mobilized by Cold War politics. Despite the euphoric embrace of open dialogue and mutual enchantment as opposed to antagonistic paranoia, however, different kinds of negative emotions linger. What makes these emotions noteworthy is that they do not directly adhere to Cold War geopolitics. Instead, they are best described as ambivalently dysphoric, stemming from long-time RedNote users (mostly overseas, diasporic, or native Chinese) who struggle to make sense of this month’s mass exodus. This struggle often manifests as small, at times hardly justifiable feelings of unease during an otherwise joyous occasion of cultural exchange. To take these feelings seriously is to think through the tensions inherent within this moment of tectonic disjuncture, which, as Appadurai reminds us, always simultaneously condition new global convergences and divergences.

First, where do we locate such feelings? We can begin by exploring the negative sentiments that lurk within a specific brand of humor. On TikTok and RedNote, a small wave of videos has echoed the same set of phrases, recited almost verbatim: “Finally after so many years of being yelled ‘go back to China’ and ‘go back to your country,’ we’ve got a shot. So now, go back to America and go back to your country!” A pause ensues before the creators relax their poker face into a chuckle. “Ok, just kidding. Welcome, TikTok refugees.”

“Go back to America” is a grating sound bite that exposes an entire tangle of affects. Namely, gnarly racial and colonial resentments overflow the parameters of fully memefied Cold War metaphors. One commenter from the U.S. writes under a video, “I feel like you were not kidding,” and someone else responds, “he wasn’t.” Just as tension surfaces, it is crucially tamed by a Toy Story penguin meme and a string of laughing-tears emojis posted by the commenters. Indeed, in most contexts, this kind of resentment never fully crystallizes into anger. Instead, it dissipates into the grey territory of a “wisecrack,” or an intimately mocking joke, an insult that bears no malice. Wisecracks, in these cases, open up a liminal space for ambivalent affects to reside, helping us cope with the less articulable and absurd injustices that we encounter in daily life.

Fig. 4: Emoji- and meme-laden comments below a “Go back to America” wisecrack video on RedNote.

Of course, coping mechanisms of humor sometimes just won’t cut it. For example, as some Chinese RedNote users witness non-Chinese refugees obtain hundreds upon thousands of views over what’s simply a self-introduction or silly meme, jealousy mixes with an all-too-familiar feeling of unfairness and inequality. Those RedNote users wonder aloud: why is it that non-Chinese users can so easily obtain the “passcode to virality” (流量密码) on a Chinese platform, when the reverse has been painstakingly difficult? Go back to America!

It is within this interplay of hostility, confusion, warm welcome, and good-natured humor that we can locate the manifestation of ugly feelings, that frictional malaise that hovers between contrasting emotional tendencies across online and offline spaces. Interspersed with the joyous, flirtatious moments of cross-platform encounter, these instances of dysphoric ambivalence complicate our understanding of the “digital Cold War” as more than a simple binary of total connection versus total antagonism. Instead, we experience the uneasy fusion of the somber and comical, the insulting and endearing. As Sianne Ngai (2007) has argued, contemporary socio-political conditions have

“[called] upon a new set of feelings – ones less powerful than the classical political passions, though perhaps more suited, in their ambient, Bartlebyan, but still diagnostic nature, for models of subjectivity, collectivity, and agency not entirely foreseen by past theorists of the commonwealth” (5).

In this framework, the “digital Cold War” goes beyond macro-political abstractions or the micro-political singularities of everyday emotions. Instead, this moment of our global history gives rise to emergent structures of feeling that traverse various levels of social organization, from ambient affects to collective political drives, from wisecrack emojis to platform infrastructures.

Architectures of Home

Ugly feelings hold together various techno-social orientations and assemblages on online platforms. These feelings in turn reveal how such algorithmic platforms are not just black-boxed technical systems, but rather lived-in spaces.

Consider another moment where dysphoric ambivalence creeps into the flood of mass migration onto RedNote. In a TikTok video, @alibihu laments the drastic change of her RedNote feed. Before, it was filled with feminine influencers offering soothing, aesthetic vlog videos and makeup tutorials, reminding us of RedNote’s primarily female-identifying, middle-upper class user base prior to mid-January. Then, she shows us her recent feed, saturated with a very different assortment of TikTok users, many of whom hastily say a quick hi to RedNote. @alibihu’s lamentation might come across as a selfish, petty desire to hold onto her materialistic, girly corner of the internet. And yet, similar feelings permeate across other videos, especially weaving into “tutorial” videos that want to teach TikTok refugees how to thrive on RedNote. These tutorials belabor the point that RedNote is not TikTok. One user even starts the video by snapping their fingers at us: “Pay attention! […] All the content on this app is very ‘high quality.’”

Fig. 5: @alibihu displays her RedNote feed before (left) and after (right) the TikTok refugee takeover.

The real issue is not whether RedNote actually offers superior—or even fundamentally different—content compared to TikTok. What matters is that, with the influx of TikTok users, there emerges a sudden awareness of, and subsequent contestations over, the stakes of inhabiting the murky, ever-shifting, but also palpably shared terrain of platform specificity. Tutorials become places where long-time users also re-familiarize themselves with RedNote’s demographics and its quirky mix of various platform interfaces. One influencer emphasizes in such a “tutorial” that RedNote users may feel a bit uncertain about the refugee situation because “newcomers don’t even know what Xiaohongshu is to us.” Indeed, the mid-January migration has led these users to rethink their connection to a platform that they may have once used with less examination.

As their digital space rapidly transforms, newfound feelings of attachment and belonging arise. These users become sensitive to the “platformative” subjectivities that they have co-formed with RedNote’s algorithm, subjectivities that stretch across platform, user, and the “screen life” of their feeds. Indeed, the platform has co-curated with them a heterogeneous amalgamation of content. As a viral TikTok phrase goes, users have “built” their personal feeds “brick by brick.” No longer exclusively perceived through frameworks of control, algorithms condition fragile and varied architectures of home. These processes of homing have never been insular or stable, but are nonetheless subject to permutations when the equally heterogeneous algorithmic architectures of another social media platform suddenly knock on the door, uninvited yet all too eager to play around.

We began this essay with a collage of cat memes and flirty notes. Now, prompted by a loose archive of ugly feelings, we close with a reflection on moments of tearful excess sprinkled across this digital migration movement. To be fair, most crying videos celebrate the nature of heartfelt exchange, whether through the Letters to Lihua trend or confirmations of transregional bonds following TikTok’s service restoration on January 19. Yet, amidst these joyful tears, one video stands out. Originally posted on January 15 on TikTok by @abbysijing, later deleted and reposted elsewhere, this video attests to the ambivalent affects that weigh on diasporic subjects in particular. For, in times like these, diasporic users are not only tasked with sharing information and providing cultural translations across the two media platforms. Many also desperately hold on to a previous version of RedNote that very much served as their lifeline to the Chinese-speaking world, to a specific feeling of home, even as the RedNote algorithm curates its own iteration of what “home” is for each user. The dysphoria experienced by these subjects amidst RedNote’s ongoing transformation thus exerts unique pressure on the disjunctures that are shaping the current moment of our “global village.”

@abbysijing opens her video by sharing a piece of speculative information to her primarily U.S. based audience: RedNote may be rolling out an update in Greater China to separate out foreign IPs, with discussions underway to migrate foreign users to another server.[4]  Although we already see that her face is red from crying, she rolls her eyes, signaling that she knows that the situation is not horribly dire, and that there will be easy ways to override this move of separation. She thus senses a lame excessiveness of her feelings. Yet, as she continues, tears still pool. “This is gonna kill the app for Chinese Americans who actually use it to connect with Chinese content […] it’s a way for me to feel—”  @abbysijing chokes on her tears and leaves the sentence unfinished. Indeed, the peak of ugly feelings may as well be the ugly cry, especially when tears feel so intense that they jam any attempts at appropriate, rational speech.

Fig. 6: Snippets from @slainangel’s repost of @abbysijing’s video on TikTok.

As we have previously detailed, RedNote attracts a sizable diasporic userbase. What has for many felt like an unprecedented moment of mass digital exodus, then, is for others an iteration woven into rather familiar patterns of physical migration and dwelling in-between various online and offline spaces. These entangled patterns are not unique just to the app. Rather, digital migration has been a reality for diasporic populations especially in the age of electronic media. For decades, overseas and diasporic Chinese have had to jump through various hoops in order to tele-port to the Mainland Chinese media scene, whether it be through purchasing Great Wall satellite TV packages or tinkering with VPNs to override more recent geo-blocking measures for apps such as iQiyi, Douyin, and QQ Music.

Within such media historical contexts, @abbysijing’s tears encapsulate the layered crises of suspended agency. For one, the potential RedNote server split remains a speculation, as both users and state/commercial actors continuously navigate constant policy changes, propaganda battles, and cross-platform politics. This state of indetermination reveals trans-border Chinese digital media as a liquid environment where plural, fluid forces, in the words of Zigmunt Bauman (1999), are able to “pass around some obstacles, dissolve others, and bore or soak their way through others still.” Yet, even more crucially, the emotional outpour of @abbysijing is a testament to the toll of obstructed diasporic agency in a time of both algorithmic governance and transgressive play. @abbysijing’s tears illustrate how invested users can be in the digital spaces they have built “brick-by-brick,” an investment all the more complicated and intense for those whose senses of belonging are already located in-between physical territories and virtual spaces of media, intermeshed with processes of departure and migration. With the influx of TikTok refugee content, what becomes of the digital feeds that diasporic RedNote users have meticulously constructed? How might the recent disturbances to their curated algorithms transform how they relate to and imagine “home”? 

Indeed, the ugly feelings we sketch out ultimately compel serious consideration of what it means to inhabit algorithmic platforms and to conceptualize them as multi-layered spaces of homing, which at once has everything and nothing to do with corresponding national territories and digital infrastructures of control. As we learn from the fleeting situations of this trans-continental platform migration, to truly home the algorithm is to dwell in its ambivalent mechanisms of displacement and re-anchoring and to nonetheless hold onto the affective power of belonging. Our vision of home and digital co-existence is to be continuously contested and redefined, always in the making.

 

Lilian Kong is a PhD Candidate in Cinema & Media Studies and East Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Shiqi Lin is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Studies at Cornell University.

Notes

[1] For example, when responding to Chinese users’ awe for this influx of TikTok refugees, one American user wrote on RedNote and won over 4700 likes and 170 replies within hours on January 14: “The government is trying to say that China is taking our data and that’s why TikTok is getting banned. Americans are trying to say ‘We trust China with our data more than we trust the USA with our data’ and we picked this because we wanted to directly give China our data. 🙂 hope this helps!”

[2] A few days after the arrival of TikTok refugees, people from across the world, such as Russians, Italians, Iraqis, and Colombians, also swarmed to RedNote out of curiosity and diversified the language environment of the app. By the time when we are writing this article, Chinese and English remain as the two most visible languages in the app. 

[3] For example, when welcoming TikTok refugees, long-time users of RedNote produced various guides translating equivalent vernacularsbetween English-speaking and Chinese-speaking social media platforms.

[4] Her statement fueled most English-language speculation across online articles and forum threads about the future of RedNote’s IP servers. In other words, the ugly feelings of a diasporic RedNote user quickly informed a non-Chinese population of potential platform-level decisions that would affect all users.

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Hyun Ok Park, On Politics after 12.3 Insurrection in South Korea 

Quickly ruled an “insurrection,” the rogue invocation of martial law in South Korea on December 3rd was a self-coup by President Yoon Suk Yeol to maintain his grip on power. During his two-and-a-half-year presidency up to that point, Yoon had vetoed 25 National Assembly resolutions, including five that sought to appoint special prosecutors to investigate him and his wife over allegations of illicit financial dealings and undue influence in nominating candidates for public office. In the months leading up to the insurrection, calls for Yoon’s impeachment were spreading rapidly across diverse sectors of society. Minority parties, scholars, filmmakers, and countless individuals voiced their dissent, many sharing personal statements on social media. When martial law was declared, the public shock extended beyond the decree itself to Yoon’s unconvincing and lackluster delivery. His dull tone and puppet-like recitation of what appeared to be someone else’s will failed to convey the urgency of a national emergency allegedly posed by the threats from “anti-state forces” (pan-kukka seryŏk). After all, the notion of a genuine threat from North Korea has long ceased to resonate seriously in South Korea. Recent incidents, such as drones from the North carrying trivial cargo, were little more than fleeting distractions in the bustle of daily life. News of the martial law declaration quickly set social media, YouTube, and podcasts ablaze with laughter and cynicism. Many dismissed it as a rash, impulsive decision—perhaps fueled by Yoon’s rumored habitual drinking—or as a political misstep amounting to self-sabotage. Others saw it as a desperate attempt to sever ties with the pervasive influence of his wife, widely perceived as the true power behind his presidency.

Despite lasting only about six hours, the botched martial law declaration, still, transported South Korean society back to 1980, evoking memories of the military-declared martial law that led to the massacre of civilians in Kwangju. The trauma of state violence, deeply etched in individual and family memories, inspired Han Kang’s Human Acts—a novel that gained renewed attention as Han received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature. However, the differences between 1980 and today are stark. The earlier martial law was imposed under military rule; this time, it was declared under liberal democracy. Yet the language of the latest decree is even more chilling. It explicitly called for the “arrest, detainment, and elimination of anti-state forces” which referred to his political rivals, whereas the 1980 decree banned political activities only, with arrests and killings carried out unofficially. Concurrently, another historical echo is now playing out in the realm of popular politics. The candlelight impeachment protests have resumed once again in the freezing winter, this time demanding the removal of President Yoon, recalling the 2016–2017 protests that led to the impeachment of Park Geun-hye. The anticipated sequence of events—impeachment, a new presidential election, and the transfer of power to the centrist Democratic Party—feels like a rerun of the past. 

Despite the celebratory framing of mass protests as bold defenses of democracy, I find Marx’s dictum—“history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”—a more fitting description of this cyclical pattern. Still, I think the direction of the South Korean future is not yet determined. That’s why we need to talk about the tripartite crises of liberal democracy, capitalism, and leftist politics (with a promissory note), in which the candlelight protest has become a new normal. Assessing these crises and asking where and how this repeated cycle of politics can be broken is key to charting a new path forward.

Immediately after the botched insurrection, the National Assembly’s defense and judiciary committees convened emergency meetings, summoning several cabinet members and military chiefs suspected of collaborating with President Yoon to testify. The inquiry painstakingly reconstructed the insurrection, interrogating suspects and collaborators on critical details: the exact wording exchanged during the cabinet meeting that approved the martial law declaration, who attended, who voiced apprehension or outright opposition, the frequency of phone calls from Yoon, the legal and illegal chains of command, and the deployment of special forces and their numbers and movements throughout the six-hour martial law period. A major feat of the investigation at the National Assembly is the identification of Yoon as the chief architect of the insurrection, as his conservative party and the prosecutor’s office, still under his influence, are likely to contest this charge.

In detail, in a mere span of one week, the investigation unearthed startling revelations so far: the coup to secure power indefinitely had been planned step-by-step since early 2024, and its failure stemmed from a fractured military command. In the months preceding the insurrection, Yoon had strategically appointed his high school alumni to key strategic posts, including the defense minister and chiefs of crucial military divisions. Under their command, the military began recruiting soldiers into special units, ostensibly to prepare for potential terrorist threats from North Korea following a series of drone provocations. These special forces underwent months of training and were placed on high alert on the day martial law was declared. Immediately following the declaration, the special teams were deployed to two key locations: the National Election Commission, under the guise of securing evidence of alleged irregularities in the June 2024 general election in which the minority Democratic Party had won a landslide victory; and the National Assembly, to prevent legislators from convening and voting to repeal martial law. Simultaneously, others were tasked with arresting opposition leaders with plans to detain them in a secret bunker. Further investigations filled in the gaps. The troops were instructed to seize the main server of the National Election Commission to plant fabricated evidence of fraud in the June election and then call for a new election with a pre-determined outcome. The detention of a prominent journalist and a political strategist, both aligned with the Democratic Party, was intended to coerce them into legitimizing the fabricated election results. Plans for Day 2 of the martial law also included deploying additional special forces throughout Seoul, suggesting an escalation of authoritarian control. A special force was prepared to provoke skirmishes with North Korea or cause violence in the society by posing as North Korean agents. These revelations have not only intensified public outrage but also highlighted the calculated planning and perilous ambitions underlying the failed coup. This effort likely began at the beginning of Yoon’s presidency when he relocated the presidential office to the Ministry of National Defense.

It turns out that this orchestrated plan quickly unraveled on that day due to a combination of poor coordination, bad timing, and critical acts of defiance. The Vice Defense Minister, mid-level military commanders, and rank-and-file soldiers refused to execute key orders. Additionally, declarations of conscience from military chiefs, along with anonymous tips—some of which had been sent for months to the Democratic Party but were previously ignored—enabled minority parties to expose the collaborators’ lies during live televised investigations. As continuous breaking news unfolded over the past week, citizens, glued to TV screens and social media, occasionally breathed sighs of relief when signs of democracy holding firm emerged. Soldiers from the MZ (Millennial and Gen Z) generation, who were dispatched to arrest politicians and others, instead spent their time eating ramen and snacks at convenience stores. Those sent to the National Election Commission left after merely photographing server cables. One particularly notable revelation came from the Chief of the 707th Special Mission Force, who made a conscience statement after the Ministry of National Defense canceled his testimony before the National Assembly. According to him, he had misunderstood his mission at the National Assembly, believing he was there to counter terrorist attacks. Unfamiliar with the National Assembly Complex, he relied on Kakao Map (a local equivalent of Google Maps) to navigate the premises, only to discover that the area was far too large for his initial team of 96 team members to secure effectively. The troops also faced unexpected resistance from party staff and citizens who had quickly arrived at the scene. In their confusion, while moving between the front and rear gates of the complex, the unit fell into disarray and lost communication. When about 20 soldiers managed to enter a building after breaking windows, they were immediately met with the discharge of activated fire extinguishers, further disrupting their efforts. Facing an increasingly untenable situation, the chief ordered a retreat, ultimately abandoning the directive to “drag out legislators.” 

Citizens at the National Assembly Complex commended the troops for avoiding violent confrontations with civilians during the chaotic operation. They helped a fallen soldier back to his feet and expressed appreciation for a young special forces member who bowed repeatedly, saying, “I am sorry.” Under the neoliberal mantra of self-survival, acts of conscience and refusal of soldiers to execute what they deemed “bullshit” or “absurd” orders can be interpreted as a manifestation of “every man for himself,” especially given that two former presidents who orchestrated the 1980 coup d’état were sentenced to death. Nevertheless, they seemed to provide a powerful affirmation that democracy still held a firm grip. These missteps, combined with individual acts of conscience and resistance, seemed to affirm the fragile yet ultimately formidable nature of South Korean democracy. The post-insurrection investigation has revealed an unexpected competence among minority party legislators and leaders, who had previously been criticized as ineffective. For many, this moment symbolizes a broader narrative of progress in South Korean history, showcasing the resilience of democratic values and the potential for growth even amid crises.

However, this swift and methodical investigation conducted by the minority parties at the National Assembly exemplifies a liberal democracy that puts procedures above all else. Buried in the procedures is the very crisis of liberal democracy in South Korea, which caused Yoon’s coup d’etat in the first place. In my view, Yoon’s declaration of martial law was not an aberration but an extension of liberal democracy itself. Though chilling and unprecedented, the use of the term “execute” (chŏdan) in the martial law decree to “arrest, detain, . . . and execute” anti-state forces reflects a deeper continuity that has characterized the South Korean liberal democratic politics. It extends the axiom of “eliminating accumulated evil” (chŏkp’ye chŏngsan), which has been a defining feature of South Korean party politics since at least the 2010s. Both major parties have accused each other of embodying accumulated evil, rallying their supporters to eradicate this abstract enemy. In this framework, “accumulated evil” lacks any concrete definition or historical specificity, functioning instead as a meta-identity. This dynamic aligns with the elementary mechanism of identity politics, where the drive to eliminate the Other serves to consolidate one’s own identity. Within this construct, colonial history is reduced to a symbolic contest between pro- and anti-Japanese stances, stripped of any historicity. Such abstract identity politics plays a critical role in maintaining the appearance of liberal democracy and political pluralism, especially when the two contending parties share an underlying commitment to liberal capitalism. Despite their ideological clashes over colonial history, these parties hold largely similar positions on chaebol monopoly capital, economic and political deregulation, and the perpetuation of precarious employment.

Amidst the backdrop of the parties’ identity politics, President Yoon has repeatedly vetoed resolutions passed by the National Assembly. Concurrently, the minority Democratic Party has increasingly relied on impeachment as a strategy to challenge the ruling majority, filing 15 motions to impeach Yoon’s appointees during his administration. When Yoon declared martial law, he specifically cited the opposition’s frequent recourse to impeachment as a critical obstacle to the proper functioning of the liberal democratic system, framing his action as a necessary measure to rescue democracy from paralysis. 

Pace Carl Schmitt, who theorized that the absolutist sovereign arises from the crises of liberal democracy to save it. It is, however, essential to interrogate the dynamics of popular politics, questioning whether and how they align with absolutist power. Theodor Adorno viewed fascism as a phenomenon rooted in mass culture, where individuals, alienated by the drudgery of work, find a temporary escape by identifying with an authoritarian and charismatic leader. Sociologist Dylan Riley argued that fascism emerged in societies with vibrant civil society movements. In South Korea, the masses have been consistently and highly mobilized both within and on the margins of liberal democracy. If the procedural investigation of the recent insurrection offers liberal democracy borrowed time, it is not simply because people are swayed by tearful testimonies, spectacles, or lies. Rather, it is because of deeper contradictions of the people themselves—contradictions that have been exposed by the recurring mass candlelight protests since the 2000s.

Candlelight protests have evolved into a distinctive form of mass politics since their emergence in 2002, rejecting both the class struggle paradigm of the 1980s democracy movement and the social and civil society movements that followed democratization in the 1990s. The candlelight protests embody a neo-anarchist ethos akin to movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. They emphasize decentralized organization, eschew established institutional frameworks and hierarchical leadership, and advocate for horizontal relationships and grassroots initiatives—often facilitated by social media platforms. This modality of politics underscores both the potential and the fragility of mass mobilizations in navigating the crises of liberal democracy, raising critical questions about their future trajectory and alignment. During the 2016-2017 impeachment protest, protesters of all ages, from teenagers to middle-aged adults, vocally rejected attempts by politicians and activists to lead the demonstrations, even though major organizations like the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) provided key logistical support, including stages, giant monitors, high-powered speakers, and electric cables. Instead, the protesters emphasized spontaneity and festive communal activities. They shared food and casual conversations on the streets, fostering a sense of solidarity. They crafted their own banners, blurring the lines between politics and everyday life. In continuity, the protests to impeach Yoon have shown banners, “The National Coalition to Stay Lying Down at Home,” “The Group That Doesn’t Want to Do Anything,” and “The Research Group on the Smell of Dog’s Paws.” Parodies of established organizations also emerged, like “Minju Myoch’ong” (Those Who Want to Democratize Cats) and “Mandu Noch’ong and Saewu Noch’ong” (Dumpling and Shrimp Associations), mocking the KCTU (Minju Noch’ong). After a week after the botched insurrection, previous signs of organized protest logistics are notably absent. The festive and communal energy is even more palpable. K-pop songs and cheerleading light balls used in pop idol concerts fill the streets. Social media platforms are buzzing with celebratory photos and practical advice and tips for participants, such as turtleneck sweaters over scarves, bread over cookies as snacks, and tying back long hair so as not to bother others on windy days. Heartwarming stories have emerged of older generations and the MZ generation bridging their differences by singing together and cheering as KCTU members pushed back police lines and garnered extra space for protesters.

South Korean scholarship remains divided over the interpretation of the candlelight protests. On one hand, some scholars dubbed them as a “candlelight revolution,” emphasizing a new grammar of mass politics driven by the synergy of social-media mobilization, youth participation, and festive protest repertoires. On the other hand, critics dismiss the movement as a liberal petty-bourgeois tendency that adheres strictly to the rule of law. In my view, this polarized debate fails to fully grasp the contradictions and political possibilities inherent in the candlelight protests. While many protesters appeared to accept impeachment and a subsequent presidential election as sufficient outcomes, their demands extended far beyond the confines of liberal democratic politics. As I have argued elsewhere, earlier candlelight protests in 2002 and 2008 began with specific grievances—the deaths of two schoolgirls caused by a U.S. military vehicle in 2002 and opposition to U.S. beef imports and South Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 2008. However, these protests quickly expanded to address broader issues: unequal military and economic relations between South Korea and the U.S., and opposition to the privatization of public goods such as education, river development, water, electricity, and media. Similarly, the 2016–2017 candlelight protests started with demands to impeach President Park Geun-hye but soon grew into a broader call to eradicate long-standing accumulated evil (chŏkp’ye). In contrast to the reified use of the term by the competing political parties, their reference to accumulated evil denoted issues such as precarious employment, the importation of rice, tax policies favoring the wealthy, privatized media, and abuses of state power, including the banning of radical opposition parties and engaging in wasteful diplomatic ventures. The protests also condemned the corruption of the chaebols, demanding the arrest of Samsung’s then de facto leader, Lee Jae-yong, who had bribed former President Park to secure his succession. 

This trajectory demonstrates that the candlelight protests were not merely limited to liberal reforms but carried the potential to challenge entrenched inequalities and systemic corruption in South Korea.

As I write this observation one week after the failed insurrection in 2024, it remains uncertain how the ongoing protests demanding the impeachment of President Yoon will address the deepening socioeconomic concerns amid new crises of capitalism in South Korea, how industrial and financial capital will respond, and what intraclass alignment of capital will develop, all of which will shape the direction of politics. Inequalities, unemployment, and hopelessness have worsened under the uneven industrial and financial capitalism. Last month, reports revealed that the number of bankruptcies among small businesses reached a record high of one million this year. Technology-intensive industries, while expanding, have long failed to provide sufficient job opportunities for college graduates. Government support for ventures, including those led by young people in sustainability and creative markets, proved fleeting. Civil service jobs, once highly sought after by college graduates for their stability, have become less appealing due to low wages, heavy workloads, and workplace harassment. The housing and construction sector, a cornerstone of South Korea’s construction and financial industries since the 2000s, is now facing a severe crisis reminiscent of the 2008 financial downturn. High interest rates and rising construction costs have exacerbated the situation. With stable employment and adequate income increasingly out of reach, many young and middle-aged South Koreans have turned to speculative investments, particularly in the cryptocurrency market. Tensions boiled over last week when the declaration of martial law caused a sharp decline in South Korea’s bitcoin market. Enraged investors expressed their anger, reflecting the volatile intersection of political and economic discontent.

The tension between socioeconomics and politics is a driving force that renews the cycle of candlelight protests. Everyday life concerns stemming from capitalist crises exceed the conventional framework of liberal democratic politics, which remains tethered to state and party politics. However, these socioeconomic concerns never truly disappear; instead, they repeatedly compel people to return to the streets. This historical cycle of protests, however, will reach its limits. Public dissent will likely escalate into new, transformative actions if substantive responses to capitalist crises and growing inequalities are not made. The political direction of such actions—whether they lead to emancipatory politics or devolve into fascism—will largely depend on how the left navigates this moment. 

The progressive forces—including KCTU, PSPD, and the left that adopted liberal democracy as a hegemonic strategy to enlist the moderate bourgeoisie—have experienced what has been noted as “leftist melancholia” over the failed revolution. Since the political liberalization in 1987, they have struggled to disavow their previous elitism and connect with the broader populace and their social realities under the crises of capitalism.  One of their key principles is tangsajajuŭi, which grants tangsaja—those directly affected, such as women, disaster victims, or striking workers—the exclusive right to determine their course of action. This approach relegates activists to the role of mere supporters or the secondary position, no matter how important their support and solidarity are. Tangsajajuŭi underscores the unresolved challenge of engaging in a dialectical relationship between intellectuals and ordinary people. During the revolutionary struggles of the 1980s, student activists worked covertly alongside workers, sharing their daily realities. Under this collaboration, the shopfloor was called hyŏnjang (literally, “now-space”), where intellectuals and workers learned from one another to transcend their immediate social and political positions. The failure of shopfloor organizing since the mid-1990s has conventionally been attributed to the dominance of economic unionism and internal conflicts within the labor movement. Similarly, the failure of leftist party politics is often blamed on bureaucratization and a disconnect with workers and the broader populace. 

Offering a new perspective on the current crisis of leftist politics, Baek Seung-wook, a Marxist sociologist and former student activist, recently revealed that the hyŏnjang movement came to an abrupt halt in 1991. This shift occurred when the left’s top leadership hastily abandoned grassroots organizing to participate in liberal democratic politics, marked by the formation of leftist political parties.[1]> Whether this turn to liberal democracy was a hegemonic strategy or not, it ultimately proved to be a failure. For example, in the June 2014 election, six progressive parties collectively secured only five seats in the 300-member National Assembly. For Baek., the pivotal moment in the recent history of South Korean democracy was not the end of the military dictatorship in 1987, as argued by the “1987 System Thesis,” but rather the liberal turn in 1991, which I term the “1991 System Thesis.” I find Baek’s reframing of South Korean history a compelling lens through which to rethink the historical present.

In the aftermath of the botched insurrection, the 1987 and 1991 System Theses present contrasting prescriptions. Proponents of the 1987 System Thesis, as they have during past crises, are once again advocating for constitutional reform to replace the presidential system with a parliamentary system—either in the style of the UK or France—to prevent the concentration of power and secure power-sharing across political parties. For example, a faction of leftists rooted in the 1980s, known as the Constitutional Assembly Faction (CA), characterizes the aftermath of the 12.3 Insurrection as a “revolutionary moment” to fulfill the unrealized aspirations of 1987. However, I think that revisiting 1991 and the broader institutionalization of liberal democracy in the 1990s offers a more long-term and substantive approach to addressing South Korea’s challenges. Such reflection is essential for the left to reformulate the hyŏnjang movement and develop new ideas and organizations that mediate between material conditions and political actions.

Hyun Ok Park is Professor of Sociology at York University

[1] Baek Seung-wook (2022) 1991 nyn ichin t’oejo ŭi ch’ulbaljŏm (1991, the starting point of the forgotten retreat), Seoul: Bukk’omma.

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Dongkyu Yeom, A Cacophony of Fools: Yoon Suk-yeol’s Martial Law in South Korea

Perhaps the writing was on the wall.

Since his inauguration as President of South Korea—or even earlier, from the time of his presidential bid—Yoon Suk-yeol was odd. While most South Koreans rely on shamanism only in jest, Yoon seemed to take it seriously. He once even appeared on a televised presidential debate with the character for “king” 王 written on his hand as a talisman. Known as a mean-spirited prosecutor, he was notorious for shaking people down and treating them as criminals, whether or not the charges were legitimate. When allegations of stock manipulation fell upon his beloved wife and her family during the presidential debates, Yoon simply dismissed them.  In May 2022, with the help of his party, the media, and political technicians masquerading as public pollsters, Yoon became the twentieth President of South Korea.

No one would have dared to question him, the ruling monarch of the Prosecutor’s Office. If anyone had, it’s likely he would have resorted to his favorite trick: shaking the challenger down, treating them as a criminal, and scattering a thick cloud of obfuscation all around them. Probably, Yoon’s close allies in the media would have leapt gleefully at the headlines, praising him as a “righteous prosecutor” while smearing the challenger as a “criminal.” This trick has been so effective that even the most upright individuals have found it difficult to withstand. It’s just like that old adage, sam-in-seong-ho (三人成虎) “three people insisting that there’s a tiger can become a tiger.” Produced in cahoots with allies in the People Power Party (PPP), their friendly media, and the manipulators of public opinion whose identities are only now coming to light, Yoon’s false narrative would become palatable as “truth” to at least half of the public. The cacophony eventually grew to such political force that Yoon achieved his “star moment” and landed the presidency.

From the start, there was an acute contradiction inherent to his presidency. Legally, Yoon could only ever rise to the rank of president, but he did not aim to be the president; he aimed to be the king. Halfway into his term, he still failed to understand his position, repeatedly eschewing the idea that the institution of the presidency is a social compact. How could “someone with a mere five-year term dare to”[1] challenge the social compact of the presidency? However, Yoon’s brazen challenge didn’t go as planned. His sudden declaration of martial law, on the night of December 3, was a desperate attempt to strike that final blow to the very institution of the presidency. Of course, it was a clumsy kick, typical of Yoon. It didn’t last more than three hours.

Throughout his term, Yoon struggled to bear the responsibilities of his office. His tenure can be encapsulated in the following sentiment: “I am king, so why am I being treated as president?” Yoon’s inability to reconcile this self-perceived identity as a monarch with the fact that the presidency is a social compact resulted in an utterly chaotic state of affairs. His administration of less than three years was marked by incompetence, lies, flip-flopping, and evasion of responsibility. Erratic policies were announced and withdrawn after facing backlash—a bizarre pattern that repeated itself endlessly. Such was the reality of South Korean politics under Yoon Suk-yeol. Yet he simultaneously cultivated an identity as a straightforward pitcher who liked to throw “stone-like fastballs.” Perhaps because throwing a fastball requires one to avoid overthinking, his policies were utterly devoid of rationality. While rational deliberation cannot always guarantee solutions to the challenges of running a country, policies devoid of rationality are destined to fail; in fact, they inflict great harm.

One of Yoon Suk-yeol’s first actions as president was to relocate the presidential office from the Blue House to Yongsan, despite widespread opposition. This decision squandered enormous sums of money, much of which flowed into companies connected to his wife. As many had feared, the hastily relocated presidential office suffered from poor security, culminating in the humiliation of being wiretapped by South Korea’s own ally—the United States. The public still struggles to understand how such an irrational decision was made, but reports suggest that it may have been influenced by Yoon’s belief in geomancy.

Yoon Suk-yeol’s reputation as a fastball pitcher who relies on frenzy rather than reason was dramatically showcased in his handling of the ongoing healthcare crisis, since February 2024. While expanding medical school quotas was arguably a long-term necessity, the decision to increase the number of enrollees by 2,000 at once defied common sense. Yoon’s administration ignored reasonable concerns that simply increasing the number of students would not automatically produce more doctors. The government failed to explain how they arrived at the arbitrary number of 2000. Medical residents responded with strikes and resignations. As the government and the medical community clashed, South Korea’s world-renowned healthcare system collapsed. The strikes and resignations spiraled out of control, yet Yoon’s administration oscillated like a pendulum—going back and forth between issuing threats and calling for negotiations. While the conflict dragged on for months, patients worsened or died as they were shuttled from hospital to hospital, unable to find emergency care.

Since the outset of Yoon’s administration, the country has been ill-prepared for major incidents and disasters, and when such events did inevitably occur, Yoon’s response was reliably irresponsible. In 2022, in central Seoul, 159 people lost their lives in a crowd surge at a Halloween festival in Itaewon. One survivor took their own life after they lost two friends and were then harassed online by commentators who mocked the victims and survivors. Yoon dismissed demands for accountability with remarks suggesting that such accidents are an inevitable part of life. He seemed to show an outsized loyalty toward his subordinates, refusing to hold them responsible. Bereaved families and citizens seeking accountability criticized the relocation of the Blue House to Yongsan (near Itaewon). They justifiably argued that the move may have disrupted crowd control measures that night. Yet their calls for investigation and accountability were utterly ignored and rejected.

When floods struck the country in 2022 and drowned those living in semi-basement apartments, Yoon seemed more focused on useless lamentations and performative photo ops than on preparing effective countermeasures. Unsurprisingly, tragedy struck again. There were more floods the following year. In addition to yet more casualties and missing persons, a marine named Chae Su-geun lost his life during a search-and-rescue operation. Legal proceedings ensued to hold the commanding officer accountable for the excessive and unsafe operations, but Yoon branded the military police officer who initiated these proceedings as a member of “anti-state forces.”

Meanwhile, Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon-hee—a savvy and experienced investor who had previously made billions through stock manipulation—was suspected of using her husband’s authority to alter highway routes to increase the value of her land property. Predictably, ruling party lawmakers and Yoon’s aides dismissed these suspicions as mere coincidences or fabrications, labeling the opposition party as “anti-state forces” whenever controversies failed to subside. Kim was subsequently accused of accepting bribes in the form of luxury bags, but despite incontrovertible evidence, Yoon, ever the romantic devoted to his wife, ensured that investigations were never conducted, or carried out only superficially.

Most recently, the so-called “Myung Tae-kyun Gate” has dominated the news. Named after a political technician masquerading as a public pollster, the scandal involved allegations of manipulating public opinion polls to interfere in the last presidential primary. Yoon was also accused of meddling in party nominations. Some have now raised suspicions that the very process by which Yoon became the PPP presidential nominee may have been illegal. New evidence and testimonies have surfaced daily, turning allegations into concrete truths. The media continues to report on these developments.

Each of these issues warranted comprehensive investigation. Even the most generous perspective could not deny the mounting suspicion. Yoon’s approval ratings plummeted. Even in a country where over 30 percent of voters lean conservative, his ratings fell to near 10 percent, leaving his presidency hanging by a thread. Yet the Prosecutor’s Office had been reluctant to investigate Yoon, given their longstanding connections. The opposition proposed an independent special prosecution,  the obvious next step, but Yoon had one final trick left to him as president: veto power. Veto after veto after veto. As public sentiment demanded at least an apology, Yoon reluctantly issued a statement. Even then, the statement was so bizarre and incomprehensible that it left people wondering, what, exactly, was he apologizing for.

It seemed that Yoon Suk-yeol was cornered. It was uncertain whether he could complete his term. The possibility of a peaceful retirement after the end of his term also appeared remote. While his inner thoughts remain unknown, he seems to have hoped that the investigations, scandals, and criticisms could be ignored, that he could continue to enjoy the honor, prestige, and opportunities for personal gain afforded by the  presidency.  His apparent wishes were not granted. He seemed upset to learn that his “throne” did not protect him, and he behaved as a spoiled child who’d believed he was king. Lawmakers scolded him again and again. Then one day, on December 3 at 11 PM, the petulant child shrieked in frustration and declared martial law.

He followed that declaration with the issuance of ridiculous, clumsy proclamations and dispatched troops to occupy the National Assembly.

Additionally, PPP house leader Choo Kyung-ho then convened his party lawmakers at the party headquarters instead of the National Assembly. This act appears to have been intended to delay the vote on lifting martial law. Choo may thus be considered an accomplice, depending on the content of his communication with the president immediately following the declaration of martial law.

Of course, this, too, was something he could not do simply because he wished it. Under South Korea’s Martial Law Act, martial law can only be declared in times of war, disaster, or comparable national emergencies. A president facing reprimands from lawmakers could hardly be interpreted as a “national emergency.”

Citizens, upon hearing the news, gathered in front of the Assembly to thwart the troops’ entry. Meanwhile, a total of 172 opposition lawmakers, along with 18 ruling party lawmakers, convened to vote for the repeal of martial law.

Yoon, therefore, became a self-declared enemy of the Republic. By declaring martial law without any legal or rational justification, ordering troops to occupy the National Assembly, and commanding the arrests of key political figures, Yoon’s actions could be classified as an act of “sedition” aimed at “overthrowing state authority or disrupting the constitutional order.” South Korea’s Criminal Code stipulates that the leader of a sedition effort can face the death penalty, life imprisonment, or long-term incarceration. The best outcome Yoon can hope for is to live out his days in prison. It is a situation entirely of his own making.

After martial law was lifted, Yoon’s former allies, who had once proudly claimed to be his “good friends,” panicked and floundered in confusion. Before Yoon’s sedition, these individuals had either aided or turned a blind eye to his blatant misuse of state institutions for personal gain. Whenever the National Assembly sought accountability, they pretended not to know anything, playing dumb to avoid responsibility. Yet now, some have begun to reflect on their misdeeds or even to expose Yoon’s misconduct. Whether these changes have been motivated by genuine reflection or fear of consequences is unclear. Either way, such  reflections and revelations seem hollow, arriving only after the Republic was pushed to the brink.

Military commanders and intelligence officials involved in the sedition effort have likewise confessed, offering details about how the operation was planned and executed. They claim to have unknowingly followed orders, only pretending to comply with those that seemed unreasonable. It remains uncertain how much we can trust the testimonies of those who abetted sedition.

Those who directed troops to commit seditious acts against the National Assembly should not expect reprieve. A clear message must be sent that even reluctant or partial participation in undermining the Republic will be severely punished, ensuring that such actions are never repeated.

Yet perhaps the most pitiable figures are those defending Yoon Suk-yeol and the martial law forces under the guise of “patriotic intentions.” Minister of Defense Kim Yong-hyun, who is reported to have proposed the idea of martial law to Yoon and directed the troop deployments, claimed that he was driven by “a single-minded determination to save the nation.” Yet, if such a grandiose motive truly existed, he should not have hidden for days in his official residence even after being dismissed as Minister of Defense. Was he so afraid after committing sedition in the name of patriotism? He should have boldly stepped forward and defended his lofty patriotic ideals with pride. Instead, he only presented himself to the prosecution several days later, after the presidential impeachment vote was nullified. Given that the Prosecutors’ Office is the very organization that gave birth to Yoon Suk-yeol and serves as his enabler, Kim’s confident appearance only after the nullification of the impeachment vote suggests that something is rotten.

The PPP leadership has also been scrambling to downplay the seriousness of the situation, acknowledging that while martial law was a mistake the president’s “intentions to save the nation” should be understandable. If Yoon Suk-yeol and his closest allies in the ruling party genuinely believe in their so-called “intentions to save the nation,” they should at least make some gesture toward accountability for what they themselves admit was an unconstitutional declaration of martial law. About a decade ago, the PPP voted to dissolve a minor political party on the grounds that it had allegedly conspired to incite sedition during some of its gatherings. Yet now, when their own president has not only planned but executed an actual sedition effort, they argue that his “intentions to save the nation” deserve respect. What kind of absurd logic is this? Even Park Geun-hye, the former president beloved by the PPP, once stated, “If you don’t learn history properly, your soul becomes abnormal.” If we are to take her words to heart, it seems that the PPP has failed to learn its own history correctly, leading to the utter abnormality of its collective soul.

Ultimately, due to the “abnormal soul” of the ruling PPP, the first impeachment motion failed to reach a quorum. The leader of the PPP, Han Dong-hoon, renowned for his keen taste in wigs and high-quality padded bras, and nicknamed “Joseon’s Finest Sword,”[2]initially declared he would block the impeachment, then claimed it was necessary, and finally opposed it altogether. According to its opponents, the impeachment constitutes a “disruption of constitutional order.” They call for a more “orderly” method. But the term “disruption of constitutional order” applies to constitutional violations such as sedition. Impeachment, conversely, is a legitimate procedure grounded in the Constitution. However, as argued throughout, Yoon Suk-yeol and his allies exhibit infantile reasoning. Their sophistry is cloaked as serious logic, tantrums are framed as legitimate criticism, and their most self-serving acts of personal gain are dressed up as public interest, producing the bizarre spectacle before us.

Even the process of nullifying the impeachment motion on December 7 was laced with the PPP’s characteristic buffoonery. Knowing that the impeachment vote was anonymous, the PPP feared that some of their own members might support impeachment despite the party’s official stance to oppose it. To preempt this, the PPP boycotted the vote entirely. It’s a tactic befitting Yoon’s infantile cohort. Just days earlier, the now “rusted-sword” party leader Han Dong-hoon had confidently declared that the PPP, as a “party of liberal democracy,” would not resort to tricks like boycotting to derail a vote. This laughable yet destructive stunt illustrates how the PPP has trivialized the Republic’s order— in the time leading up to Yoon’s sedition as well as in its aftermath—and they will likely continue to do so.

Meanwhile, a crowd of one million gathered in Yeouido, calling for the president’s impeachment. Standing in front of the National Assembly, they represented just one gathering among many. Elsewhere, groups ranging from hundreds to thousands mobilized to demand Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment. When the PPP lawmakers walked out, and the vote could not proceed according to schedule, people waited anxiously, braving subzero temperatures in the hope that the absent lawmakers might return. But the ruling conservative party, ironically named the “People’s Power Party,” has betrayed the people, turning its very name into a cruel joke.

It is marvelous that South Korea managed to lift martial law in just three hours through the power of its citizens. But the national sedition crisis is far from over. The problem lies in the fact that Yoon Suk-yeol and his active or passive collaborators of sedition, lack the maturity necessary to function as members of the Republic. This is the stark truth revealed by the recent martial law declarations and the developments that followed. South Korea’s major conservative party is ready to throw out the Constitution, reason, and order if the party’s goals are thwarted. The safety and lives of the people are not their priority. On the night of December 3, this problem took the form of unconstitutional martial law—an act of sedition. On the night of December 7, it manifested as the nullification of impeachment. What comes next could well be war. Thus, the democratic Republic of Korea now faces an extraordinarily grave moment. If the Republic is not preserved, this crisis may spiral into a crisis that threatens not only the Korean peninsula but also the entire region.

[1] The phrase “how could someone with a mere five-year term dare to…” was one of Yoon’s favorite mantras, frequently directed at former President Moon Jae-in.

[2] “Joseon’s Finest Sword” was one of Han Dong-hoon’s nicknames, inspired by his prosecutorial role in leading numerous investigations into South Korea’s major corporations alongside Yoon Suk-yeol. The name was popularized by South Korea’s conservative mainstream media through coverage that often bordered on hagiography.

Dongkyu Yeom is a PhD student in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan and a member of the Graduate Students and Researchers in North America – University of Michigan Chapter, recently formed to organize petitions and protests against Yoon Suk-yeol. This commentary was originally written in Korean, included below.

 

 

염동규, 서울의 밤에 울려퍼진 바보들의 합창

어쩌면 예견된 일이었다.

임기 시작부터, 아니 출마했을 때부터 범상치가 않은 인간이었다. 대다수의 국민들이 재미삼아서나 의지하는 무속신앙을 진심으로 믿었던 윤석열은 손바닥에 왕(王)자를 쓰고 TV 토론회에 참여할 만큼 21세기의 상식과 이성에서 엇나간 존재였다. 남의 티끌을 있는 것 없는 것 가릴 것 없이 탈탈 털어 범죄자로 만들어버릇하는 못 되먹은검사였던 그는 자신이 사랑해 마지 않는 아내와 그 일가가 저지른 주가 조작 의혹 등에 대해서는 증명되지 않는거짓말로 의혹을 일축해버렸고, 그가 속한 정당과 언론, 여론조사를 가장한 정치 기술자들과 검찰의 도움을 받아대한민국의 20대 대통령이 되어버렸다.

검사 조직에서 그야말로 제왕처럼 군림했을 때야 누가 자신을 의심할 일조차 없었을 것이다. 누군가 감히 그의 권위에 도전하려 든다면, 그는 그가 즐겨 애용하던 술법을 사용하면 그만이었을 테니까 말이다. 도전자의 몸에 묻은먼지를 털어 그의 주변에 시뿌연 먼지 안개를 흩뿌려놓는 것. 그러면 그의 좋은 친구들인 언론들이 기사 거리 생겼다고 좋아라 하며 윤석열을 ‘정의로운 검사’로 추켜 세우고 그에게 도전한 자를 ‘범법자’로 먹칠해버리면 그만이었을 것이다. 이 술법 앞에선 아무리 결벽적인 사람도 쉬이 맞서기가 어려웠다. 세 사람이 모이면 호랑이도 만든다는데, 딱 그 꼴이었다. 윤석열과 윤석열의 친구들인 “국민의힘” 국회의원들과 그 주변에 모인 언론들, 그리고최근에서야 그 정체가 밝혀지고 있는 여론 조작 기술자들이 모여서 생산해낸 가상은 절반쯤의 대중에게는 믿을만한 진실이 되었고, 삼인성호의 야단법석은 점차 하나의 거대한 세력이 되어 마침내 윤석열에게 소위 말하는“별의 순간”이 만들어지고 만 것이다.

문제는 이 사태가 처음부터 가지고 있었던 지독한 모순이었다. 법적 절차에 따라 그가 될 수 있었던 것은 ‘대통령’이었지만, 윤석열 자신은 ‘왕’이 되려고 했지 대통령이 되려고 한 것은 아니었기 때문이다. 그는 임기 절반을지내도록 이 점을 이해하지 못한 채 거듭 “대통령”이라는 제도의 사회적 의미와 대결했다. “기껏해야 5년짜리 주제에 겁도 없이” ‘대통령’이라는 사회적 의미와 대결하려 들다니, 용감하다고 해야할까. 하지만 윤석열의 패기 있는 도전은 그의 생각만큼 잘 풀리지 않았다. 지난 12월 3일 밤 느닷없이 선포된 계엄령은 스스로를 제왕이라고 믿는 윤석열이 ‘대통령’이라는 직위의 사회적 의미에 내던진 마지막 발길질 같은 것이었다. 물론 그것은 윤석열답게 어설픈 발길질이어서, 계엄 선포 후 겨우 세 시간만에 실패해버리고 말았다. 술을 너무 많이 마셔 헛발질을 하다 빙판길에 넘어진 주폭자 꼴이었다.

임기 내내 윤석열은 “대통령”으로서의 사회적 직위를 감당하기 어려워했다. 나는 왕인데 왜 대통령으로 대우하느냐,는 것이 재임기간 동안 윤석열이라는 존재가 보여준 핵심이었다. 그가 끝끝내 견뎌낼 수 없었던 제왕으로서의 자기 정체성과 대통령이라는 사회적 역할 사이의 모순으로 인해, 윤석열 집권 후 지난 3년 남짓 동안의 대한민국은 실정과 거짓말, 말바꾸기, 적극적인 책임 회피가 하루가 멀다하고 등장하는 아수라장이 되었다. 뜬금 없는정책들이 발표되었다가 욕을 먹고 철회되는 기묘한 패턴의 반복. 그것이 윤석열이 대통령으로 있는 동안의 대한민국 정치 현실이었지만, 또 한편 그는 돌직구를 좋아하는 강단 있는 투수로서의 정체성도 갖고 있었다. 돌직구를던질 때는 너무 많은 생각을 하지 않아야 하기 때문인지, 끝까지 관철시킬 요량으로 던져버린 정책은 그야말로 이성의 결여라고 할 만한 것이었다. 아무리 합리적으로 재고 따지더라도 잘 안 풀리는 수가 있는 게 국가의 경영일터, 하물며 이성이 없는 정책에게는 실패만이 예정된 수순이었다. 그런 정책들은 국가에 큰 해를 끼쳤다.

많은 이들의 만류와 반대에도 불구하고 윤석열은 일단 청와대부터 옮겼다. 돈은 돈대로 들었고, 그 돈들은 그의애처와 관련된 회사로 흘러 들어갔다. 많은 이들의 우려대로, 급조식으로 옮겨진 대통령 집무실은 보안이 허술해서 동맹국인 미국으로부터 도청까지 당하는 망신을 겪었다. 무엇 하나 상식적이지 않은 이 의사 결정이 어떻게 이뤄졌는지 국민들은 여전히 이해하기가 어렵지만, 들려오는 소식들은 그것이 풍수지리설에 근거했을 가능성을 시사하고 있다.

이성보다는 광기에 의지하는 돌직구 투수, 윤석열의 정체성은 의대 정원 2000명 확대 문제에서도 드라마틱하게만개했다. 의대 정원을 확대하는 문제는 장기적으로 필요하다고도 할 수 있는 일이었지만, 2000명이라는 숫자를한 번에 확대한다는 것은 상식을 벗어난 조치였다. 학생을 학교에 몰아넣기만 한다고 의사가 길러지는 것은 아니라는 합리적 우려는 전혀 고려조차 되지 않았고 왜 하필 2000명이냐는 질문에는 제대로 된 대답이 없었다. 어처구니 없는 정책에 대해 전공의들은 파업과 사직으로 맞섰다. 정부와 의료계가 강대강으로 맞서기만 하는 통에 세계최고 수준을 자부했던 양질의 의료 시스템은 삽시간에 붕괴되었다. 파업과 사직 행렬은 걷잡을 수 없이 커졌지만, 윤석열의 정부는 으름장을 놓았다가 대화를 하자고 했다가, 다시 으름장을 놓았다가, 대화를 하자고 하는 망나니같은 진자 운동을 반복했다. 의정 갈등이 몇 달씩이나 지속되는 동안, 환자들은 응급실을 찾지 못해 병원을 전전하다 사망하거나 병을 키웠다.

윤석열 정권이 시작된 이래, 나라에 벌어질 수밖에 없는 크고 작은 사건 사고들은 제대로 대비되지 않았고, 일단저질러진 사건 사고에 대해 그는 무책임으로 일관하였다. 시내 한복판의 축제에서 일어난 사고로 인해 사람이159명이나 죽었고, 두 명의 친구를 잃은 생존자 하나는 트라우마에 시달리다 희생자들과 생존자들을 조롱하는 온라인 상의 댓글들에 시달려 자살하는 일까지 있었지만, 살다보면 사고는 벌어지게 마련이지 않느냐는 식으로 책임 추궁을 가로막았다. 자신의 수하에 대한 대단한 의리감은 또 있는 모양인지, 수하에게 책임을 대신 지게 하지도 않았다. 멀쩡한 청와대를 뜬금없이 용산으로 옮겨버린 탓에 축제 인파 관리에 구멍이 생긴 게 아니냐는 정당한비판과, 진상과 책임을 규명하기 위한 유가족들과 시민들의 요구는 적극적으로 무시되고 거부되었다.

나라에 물난리가 나 반지하에 살던 사람들이 물에 잠겨 죽는 일이 발생하기도 했지만, 수해 대책이 왜 제대로 마련되지 않았는가, 앞으로의 수해에는 어떻게 대응할 것인가 하는 데 대한 대책 마련보다 쓸 데 없는 탄식과 보여주기 식의 사진 촬영만이 그의 관심사인 듯 보였다. 그래서일까. 이듬해의 수해에서도 비극이 벌어졌다. 사망자와실종자가 발생한 것은 물론이고 이번에는 실종자를 수색하기 위한 대민지원의 과정에서 해병대원 채수근 상병이목숨을 잃는 사건까지 있었다. 보여주기 식의 무리한 수색작전을 벌인 지휘관의 책임을 묻는 법적 절차가 가동되었지만, 윤석열은 정상적인 절차를 가동시킨 군사경찰 간부를 반국가세력으로 낙인찍어버렸다.

그러는 동안 이미 주가 조작으로 수십억을 챙긴 바 있는 노련한 투자 고수이자 윤석열의 부인인 김건희는 남편의권위를 등에 업고 고속도로 노선을 변경시켜 자신이 소유한 땅의 가치를 올리고자 했다는 의혹을 일으켰다. 물론여당 의원들과 윤석열의 측근들은 늘 그렇듯 이 모든 의심거리들을 단순한 우연, 혹은 억지로 몰아붙였고, 논란이잠잠해지지 않으면 이 모든 게 다 “반국가세력”인 야당 때문이라고 악다구니를 썼다. 애처의 망동은 급기야 명품백을 수수하는 지경에까지 이르렀다. 빼도 박도 못할 증거가 있었지만, 윤석열은 부인 하나만큼은 끔찍하게 사랑하는 로맨티스트였다. 수사는 이뤄지지 않았거나 특별 대우 속에서 구색 맞추기 식으로 이뤄졌을 뿐이다.

최근에는 소위 명태균 게이트로 알려진 사건이 뉴스를 뒤덮고 있다. 여론조사를 조작하여 대선 경선을 방해하고대통령이 정당의 공천권에 개입했다는 것이었다. 국민의힘 대통령 후보로 선출되는 과정부터가 불법이 아니냐는의혹이 쏟아지고 있다. 각종 증언들과 자료들이 연일 제시되면서, 의혹은 점차 의혹이 아닌 실체적 진실로 구성되어 가고 있다. 언론은 계속해서 관련된 후속 보도를 예고하는 중이다.

이들 중 그 어떤 것도 적극적인 수사를 요하지 않는 일이 없었다. 세상에서 가장 관대하고 우호적인 시선으로 들여다보더라도 미심쩍은 대목 투성이였다. 대통령의 지지율은 곤두박질쳤다. 보수적 성향의 유권자들이 여전히30퍼센트는 가뿐히 넘는 나라에서조차 윤석열의 지지율은 10퍼센트대를 기록하고 있으니, 대통령으로서의 그의자리는 그야말로 풍전등화와 같은 신세이다. 그럼에도 불구하고 평소 안하무인격으로 휘둘러졌던 검찰의 칼끝은그들과 일심동체인 윤석열을 향해서는 좀체 휘둘러지지 않았다. 그에 따라 야당의 특검안 발의는 자연스러운 수순이었지만, 윤석열에게는 대통령으로 전직한 뒤 얻게 된 마지막 술법, 거부권이 남아 있었다. 거부권에 거부권에거부권. 이따위로 할 거면 뭐 사과라도 해야 되는 거 아니냐는 말들이 들끓자 그는 마지못해 사과담화를 내보냈다. 그러나 마지못해 한 사과담화조차도 당최 무엇을 사과했는지 알아듣기 어려운 괴랄한 것이었다.

윤석열은 계속해서 코너로 몰렸다. 남은 임기를 채우는 것도 위태로울 지경이었지만, 퇴임 이후에 그가 평화롭게은퇴할 가능성은 없어보였다. 윤석열 본인의 속마음까지는 알 수 없지만, 그는 그저 이 모든 일이 없던 일이 되었으면 좋겠다는 마음뿐인 듯 보였다. 검찰 수사도, 특검 수사도 모두 이루어지지 않는, 대통령에게 부여되는 영예와 위신과 수익 창출의 기회만을 누리고, 정계 진출 전후로 벌어진 범법 행위와 실정과 무능은 모두 눈감아지기바라는 모양새였다. 제왕의 자리에 오르면 무엇이든 원하는 대로 할 수 있고, 세상이 다 자신의 것이 될 줄 알았는데, 그렇지가 않아 속상한 어린 아이. 오냐오냐 하는 사람들 속에서 자라 자신이 왕인 줄 착각하는 어린 아이. 그것이 윤석열이 임기 내내 보여준 모습이었다. 그러던 어느 날, 12월 3일 밤 11시, 버르장머리를 도저히 두고볼 수 없었던 어른에게 혼나고 혼나고 혼나다가 마침내 빽! 괴성을 지르는 어린 아이처럼, 윤석열은 계엄을 선포했다. 물론 그마저도 자기 마음대로 하고 말고 할 수 있는 일이 아니었다. 대한민국의 계엄법은 전시, 사변 혹은 이에 준하는 비상사태시에만 선포될 수 있게 되어 있다. 윤석열 어린이를 나무라는 국회의원들이 많다는 사실만으로 이를“전시, 사변 혹은 이에 준하는 비상사태”라고 볼 수는 없기 때문이다.

그리하여 윤석열은 자기 스스로 공화국의 적이 되었다. 법적, 이성적 근거가 없는 계엄을 선포함으로써, 계엄군을통해 국회를 장악하고 주요 정치인들을 체포하라는 명령을 내림으로써, 윤석열의 계엄은 “대한민국 영토의 전부또는 일부에서 국가권력을 배제하거나 국헌을 문란하게 할 목적”으로 일으킨 “내란”으로 규정될 수 있게 되었다. 게다가 대한민국의 형법은 내란의 우두머리에 대해 “사형, 무기징역 또는 무기금고에 처한다”고 규정하고 있다. 이제 그가 기대할 수 있는 최대한의 사회적 관용은 감옥에서 목숨을 부지하는 것밖에는 없게 됐다. 모두 그가 자초한 일이다.

계엄이 선포되고, 사실은 좀 웃기고 어설픈 내용들로 가득한 계엄포고령이 반포되고, 계엄군이 국회에 진입하기위해 출동하고, 소식을 들은 시민들이 국회 앞으로 모여 계엄군의 진입을 늦추고, 172명의 야당 국회의원들과 그래도 민주공화국의 a, b, c 정도는 알고 있는 18명의 여당 국회의원들이 모여 계엄 해제를 통과시키고, 윤석열 어린이의 계엄해제가 발표된 뒤, 그 동안 윤석열의 좋은 친구를 자임했던 인간들은 어쩔 줄을 몰라 우왕좌왕하는 중이다. 윤석열의 내란이 있기 전까지는 그가 국가 기관을 이용하여 사익을 챙기는 꼴을 돕거나 방조했던 자들, 국회가 책임을 물을 때마다 늘 모르는 척, 바보 행세를 하며 책임을 피해오던 겁쟁이들 중 일부가 내란 이후엔 반성을 하거나 폭로를 하고 있다. 정신을 차려서 그러는 것인지 후과가 두려워서 그러는 것인지는 모르겠지만, 공화국을 벼랑 끝까지 몰아넣고 나서야 이루어지는 반성과 폭로란 얼마나 공허한 것인가?

계엄에 참여했던 군 지휘관들과 정보기관의 고위 관료들 역시 윤석열의 내란이 어떤 과정으로 선포되고 진행되었는지 고백하며 자신들은 사태를 잘 모른 채 명령을 따랐고, 영 아니다 싶은 명령들은 따르는 척만 했다고 주장하는 중이다. 내란에 가담한 자들의 말을 어디까지 믿어줘야 할진 모르겠지만 계엄군을 국회에 진입시키는 내란행위를 지휘한 자들이 그 책임을 면할 수 있을 것이라고 기대하지는 말아야 할 것이다. 공화국의 근간을 뒤흔드는일에 대해서는 미적지근하게 참여하는 경우에조차 무겁게 처벌한다는 사실이 이번 기회를 통해 알려져야 더 이상 이런 일이 없을 것이다. 계엄 선포 이후 자당 국회의원들을 국회가 아닌 당사로 소집시키는 기이한 행보를 보여, 계엄해제 표결을 고의로 늦추려 했다는 의혹을 받고 있는 국민의힘 원내대표 추경호 역시 계엄 선포 직후 대통령과의 전화통화에서 나눈 사랑의 속삭임이 어떤 내용이었는지에 따라 내란의 공범으로 취급될 필요가 있다.

하지만 이보다 더 애처로운 자들은 윤석열 어린이와 계엄세력의 “구국의 의지”를 강조하는 자들이다. 윤석열에게 계엄을 건의하고 군 투입을 지시한 김용현은 자신이 내란에 참여한 동기가 “구국의 일념”에 있다고 주장했다. 그러나 “구국의 일념”과 같은 거창한 동기가 있었다면, 국방부 장관에서 면직된 이후에도 며칠 씩이나 관사에—구국의 일념으로 내란을 저질렀다는 짜식이 집에 가기는 또 무서웠단 말인가—숨어 있지 말고 당당하게 나와 그대단하신 구국의 일념에 대해 떳떳한 자기 변호를 했어야 할 것이다. 하지만 그는 며칠 뒤 마침내 탄핵 표결이 무효화되고 나서야 검찰에 자진 출석했다. 윤석열을 배출한 조직이자, 윤석열의 수족으로서 나라를 망쳐왔던 게 바로 검찰 조직임을 생각한다면, 탄핵이 무효화되고 난 뒤가 되어서야 자신있는 모습으로 검찰 조사에 출두한다는것은 역시 뒤가 구려보일 수밖에 없다.

여당의 주류 역시 계엄은 잘못된 것이지만 “대통령”의 “구국의 의지”만큼은 이해할 만한 것이지 않냐며 사안의심각성을 희석시키고자 안간힘이다. 윤석열 어린이와 그의 오른팔이었던 여당 국회의원들이 정말로 “구국의 의지”인지 뭔지를 가지고 있다면 자신들도 인정한다는 “위헌적 계엄”에 대해 책임지는 시늉이라도 좀 해야 할 것이다. 십여년 전에는 소수 정당 하나가 집회에서 내란을 모의했다는 이유로 정당해산까지 시켜버리더니, 자기당 대통령이 실행에 옮기기까지 한 내란에 대해 그 “구국의 의지”만큼은 존중하자는 게 무슨 뚱딴지 같은 소리일까? 국민의힘이 사랑해 마지않는 박근혜 전 대통령도 “바르게 역사를 배우지 못하면 혼이 비정상이 된다”고 했었는데, 친애하는 박 전 대통령의 말에 따른다면 국민의 힘은 자기 정당의 역사를 바르게 배우지 못해 마침내는 혼이비정상이 된 듯하다.

결국 여당인 국민의힘의 “혼이 비정상”인 탓에 첫 번째 탄핵안은 의결정족수 미달로 폐기되어버렸다. 계엄은 명백한 위헌이라며 계엄령 해제 결의에 동참했던, 매력적인 가발과 품질 좋은 뽕브라에 대한 빼어난 감식안의 소유자, “조선 제일검”, 한동훈 국민의힘 대표는 탄핵만큼은 막겠다고 했다가 탄핵을 해야한다고 했다가 끝내는 탄핵에 반대해버렸다. 이들에 따르면 탄핵은 “헌정질서의 중단”이므로, 그것보다 “질서” 있는 방식을 택해야 한단다. “헌정질서의 중단”이란 내란과 같은 헌법 파괴 행위에 대해서나 하는 말이지, 헌법에 입각한 정상적인 절차로서의 탄핵에 대해서 하는 말이 아니지만, 이 글에서 거듭 주장해왔듯이 윤석열과 윤석열의 친구들은 어린 아이 수준밖에 안 되기 때문에 궤변조차 근엄한 논리로 치장되고, 생떼도 정당한 비판이 되며, 가장 졸렬한 사익 추구 행위가 공익으로 탈바꿈 되는 괴상한 광경이 연출되고 있다.

탄핵소추안을 무효화시키는 전 과정에도 국민의힘 다운 재기 넘치는 익살이 있었다. 무기명 투표로 이루어진 탄핵안 표결이니 만큼, “탄핵 반대”가 당론으로 정해졌더라도 일부의 자당 국회의원들이 탄핵 찬성으로 돌아설까두려워 아예 당론 자체를 표결 불참으로 정해버린 것이다. 과연 윤석열 어린이의 유치원 친구들 다운 편법인데, 불과 며칠 전만해도 녹슨 검 당대표 한동훈이 “자유 민주주의” 정당인 국민의힘은 표결에 불참해 안건을 불성립시키는 편법 따위는 사용하지 않는다고 일축했던 데 비추어보면 이들의 재기 넘치면서도 파괴적인 장난꾸러기짓이 윤석열의 내란 행위에 이르기까지, 심지어 내란 이후에조차 공화국의 질서를 얼마나 우습게 만들어왔고 또만들어갈 것인지를 잘 보여주는 사건이라고 해야겠다.

그러는 사이 여의도 앞에는 100만 인파가 모여 대통령 탄핵을 외쳤다. 표결 일정에 맞춰 내란 수괴의 탄핵을 절실히 바라는 마음으로 국회 앞에 모인 100만의 시민이 있었다. 국회 앞이 아닌 다른 지역에서도 적게는 수백, 많게는수천명이 모여 윤석열의 탄핵을 외쳤다. 국민의힘 의원들의 퇴장으로 인해 표결은 이뤄져야 할 시간에 이뤄지지않았고, 시민들은 본회의장을 떠나버린 국민의힘 국회의원들이 혹시라도 돌아오지 않을까 가슴 졸이며 기다렸다. 영하의 날씨에, 추위를 견뎌가며 기다렸다. 그러나 “국민의힘”이라는, 보수정당으로서는 꽤나 이례적인 이름을 가진 여당은 국민을 배신함으로써 자기 이름까지도 하나의 익살로 만들어버렸다.

한국이 불과 세 시간만에 시민의 힘으로 계엄을 해제시켰다는 사실의 경이로움과는 별개로, 국가 내란 사태는 아직 끝나지 않았다. 문제는 내란을 일으킨 윤석열과 그에 적극적으로 혹은 소극적으로 동조하는 방조범들이 모두공화국 일원으로서의 성숙한 사고가 불가능하다는 데 있다. 이번 계엄과 현재까지의 사태 경과가 정면으로 보여주는 것은 바로 이것이다. 원하는 게 이루어지지 않으면 헌법이고 이성이고 질서고 다 개나 줘버릴 수 있는 게 현재 한국의 거대 보수정당이다. 국민의 생명과 안전은 이들에게 일순위가 아니다. 12월 3일 밤에는 그것이 위헌적계엄, 즉 내란 행위로 표현되었다. 12월 7일 밤에는 그것이 탄핵 무효화로 표현되었다. 이 다음은 전쟁일 수도 있다. 따라서, 민주공화국, 대한민국은 지금 아주 중대한 위기에 봉착해 있다. 공화국이 수호되지 않으면, 지금의 위기는 한반도뿐 아니라 주변 지역까지 위협하는 수렁이 될 수도 있다.

 

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